subject: The Right Medical Transcription School Is About More Than Education [print this page] Your medical transcription education is important to your future as a transcriptionist. There's a lot to learn if you want to succeed, especially when many positions pay on production rather than hourly. But it's not all about education when you choose a school.
You want to choose a medical transcriptionist school that also offers job placement assistance, for starters. It can be incredibly hard to land that first job. Job placement services can help speed your job hunt.
The right school is also accepted in lieu of experience by many employers. It's hard to get around the commonly required two years of experience if you go through the wrong program. Many employers are reluctant to give students from unknown schools a chance because they've been burned too often by hiring low quality employees.
Go to a school they trust, and they know what the likely quality of your education was. Pass their tests, and you have entry into your career as a medical transcriptionist.
Some people grumble about having to pay for their education just to get a job in medical transcription. They'd love to be paid to go through training by an employer. But that doesn't work in a lot of jobs.
Medical transcription is a highly demanding job. It requires quite a bit of knowledge. This isn't working retail where most of the training is about working the particular systems of a particular store. This is a job with highly specialized terminology as well as technology you may not be familiar with. The training requires months, and employers can't afford to take a risk on you for that long with no return.
Add in the absolute need for high quality work, and it makes more sense for you to get your own training before job hunting.
Paying for your education is much more like going to college or a technical school for a particular job you want. You don't expect all jobs to just hire people right off the street. Most jobs expect that you will have some knowledge of the work you will be doing. Just think of all the education a computer programmer needs to get. Some may have taught themselves, but most went to college or other program to learn enough for their jobs.
Quality training is much to your benefit too. Many at home transcriptionist positions pay on production. Medical transcription is much more than just typing what you hear. You need to really understand the doctor's dictation. Otherwise you will lose too much time trying to figure it out. You will also struggle with quality issues if you aren't properly trained.
Grumbling about the need to pay for your own training is unproductive when you're talking about entering such a specialized industry. You're going to have to pay any time you want to get into a field that demands so much from its workers.
