If you have an interest in the medical field and enjoy office work, you should consider a career in medical transcription. Demand in this field continues to grow and each year there are more job opportunities.

Medical transcription clerks quickly and accurately transcribe medical records that are dictated by doctors and other medical professionals. You will be working with clinic notes, physical reports, office notes, consultation reports, operative reports, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory results, pathology reports, and x-ray results to name just some of the record types.

The clerk receives the information on a dictation tape which is then listened to using a Dictaphone machine and transcribed into a word processing program. Different doctors use different word processing software but all have medical dictionaries. There are several that are required including medications, medical definitions, and abbreviations.

In order to do this job you must have good computer and language skills. You must also be well versed in medical terminology, laboratory terms, surgical terms, procedures, and abbreviations. Medical transcription clerks must be accurate as they are responsible for correctly transcribing patient medical records.

You can complete a Medical Transcription certification program online. The length of programs varies depending on the level of training you undertake, but on average they take anywhere from 6 months to 9 months to complete.

You will then be qualified to work in a hospital or medical office as a transcriptionist. There are also job opportunities in the field becoming available online. In the United States you can expect to earn around $10.00 per hour to start, and with just a few years experience this can jump to $20.00 per hour or more. National transcription companies require 2-5 years of hospital experience, but they pay substantially better! Online, in a self employed environment, you can earn up to $40.00 per hour.

Although membership in a professional association is not required, it is recommended. The AAMT, The American Association for Medical Transcription, was founded in 1978 and provides you with the bimonthly Journal of the Association for American Medical Transcription, discounts on professional services and products, access to educational conferences and seminars, access to AAMT professional staff, and the opportunity to become a Certified Medical Transcriptionist.

If a career in medical transcription is for you, check with the many online universities about their program requirements.

Many people think they can get into the medical transcription industry easily, make good money and live happily ever after. Surely you’ve seen this type of message before with people selling correspondence courses. Can you really make a good living with medical transcription? In this article, we’ll go into the good and the bad of the medical transcription industry and see if itz’s for you or not.

Medical transcription is a challenging and rewarding career and the demand for it just keeps growing. there are more than enough jobs out there for anyone willing to make a career in medical transcription.

But many people come into this line of work and think they can make a career out of it just because the demand is high. Then they start going through the process and find that it’s a lot harder than they anticipated.

They thought it would be an easy way to make good money . It is a way to make money, but with anything worth something, it’s not always easy.

One of the drawbacks of medical transcription is that it takes training and continuing education. This alone scares many would-be medical transcriptionists away from the field. It takes dedication and a willingness to learn and keep learning. At some point you have to ask yourself  “If the demand is high and the supply of medical transcriptionists are low, why isn’t everyone getting into this?”.

This is the very reason. It’s not easy. It’s rewarding, but it’s not easy.

Usually, it takes six months to get a handle on the medical terminology and the different medical conditions, drugs, procedures, tests, and treatments that are required by the field.

Another hurdle is the fact that the medical industry is constantly advancing  and constantly changing. Being able to adapt to new medical treatments, drugs and terminology is imperative to your success with medical transcription.

There are mail order medical transcription courses out there and many professionals indorse them, but it’s best to go the “hands on ” route while learning medical transcription. On the job training or a college teaching it in your area would be the best way to learn. You can get the much needed hands on experience that you can’t get with a correspondence course.

While a mail order course may be helpful, it doesn’t take the place of a live human being helping you learn the basics and beyond.

Medical transcription clearly isn’t for everybody. If you’re serious about earning a good living with a high income career, you should take a close look at it.