Welcome, MT!

by: Loyde Ruth Q. Moran (Medical Transcriptionist)

        It wasn't long ago when my youngest child, noticing me engrossed in sending a text message, gleefully announced to her sisters, "Look, mama can now text with one hand."

        This serious business of texting used to be done using both hands, with not a few frowns and mutterings under my breath.

        "As if the phone would attempt to escape," another child teased. "Well, at least, no one can snatch it from you, Ma," the eldest added as a finale.

        I've never been a techie, never saw the need to be one. Technology and modern gadgets have always been a topic of animated ribbing between my girls and myself. The premise is that, there used to be a time when people's knowledge and learning started in their brains. Now, they're simply at their fingertips. So, blissfully i coasted a long, never seeing the need for a cell phone or, much less, a computer.
Most of the time, what I need, I already have.

        But now that I'm nose-deep into becoming a medical transcriptionist, I find that leaning to use a computer, on my own, can be rewarding. For one thing, I get to update myself as a professional nurse.

        Sadly, the machine and I aren't friends yet. It thinks of itself as its own master. It surely has a will of its own. Sometimes it hides my files. Just today, I had this newly transcribed file set aside for retrieval later. When I tried to open it, it was nowhere to be found. Even the address got lost. I muttered, cajoled, and begged, but the silly machine was unmoved. An expert was finally called to retrieve the file.

        But I also encounter some light moments once in a while. There was this doctor's list of items to be done to a patient. Among other things, there was this instruction: "send to manicure." Just like you and I would ordinarily say, "send to market," or "send to laboratory." Another one: "TV time." At least that was how I heard the voice file, and so transcribed it as such. "Wow!" I thought, "the American MDs are really getting creative in the way they care for their patients."

        When the "perfect copy" came out, however, I realized that the doctor had been conservative and went by the book. The patient didn't need a manicure. She needed "symptomatic care." The other one with tinnitus, though needing other sounds to mask the ringing sensations in her ears, did not need a TV time. She had to be tested for tuberculosis, thus, "TB tine."

        It's still a long, long way off to breaking the sound barrier, speed wise and otherwise, in medical transcription, that is. I know I'm not there yet, even in my dreams. But it will come, I'm sure of that. As always, and added skill will be useful in due time.