A medical transcriptionist listens to tape recordings that doctors make and transcribes the recordings into reports. Many medical transcriptionists work in hospitals, doctors' offices, transcription service offices and in their own homes. Medical transcription can be a legitimate work-at-home job. However, many scams use the offer of medical transcription at home as bait. It's not difficult to learn the difference.
Training
Medical transcription work is not easy. It's a demanding job that requires training from certain schools, and you often need experience before landing a job. Typically, employers hire transcriptionists who completed a course in medical transcription from a vocational school or a community college. Courses you can expect to take to earn your degree in medical transcription are anatomy, medical terminology and health care documentation. Some programs offer on-the-job experience.
Certification
To further your marketability as a medical transcriptionist, you can become certified as a registered medical transcriptionist (RMT) or as a certified medical transcriptionist (CMT). To become an RMT, you need to pass the AHDI level-1 registered medical transcription exam. To become a CMT, you need at least two years of acute care experience and to pass a certification exam.
Jobs
Once you've been educated in medical transcription, you'll know what "discomfort anterior to the lateral malleolus" means, says Lynn Shniper, an economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You'll also know the names of muscles and bones and spell the names of prescription drugs. Once you've studied and learned medical terminology, you can get a job as a medical transcriptionist because ample job openings, including ones to work at home, exist.
Scams
If you don't have training in medical transcription but are tempted to answer an ad you see that guarantees you'll earn $500 a week working from home as a medical transcriptionist, don't believe it. This type of work-at-home scam is quite common. The way the medical transcription scam typically works is to advertise a high-paying transcription job for a medical company. This company, you learn, uses special software that you must purchase. The software is typically expensive. After you buy it, you find out that there is no medical company associated with the software, so the software you bought is useless.
Earnings
Trained medical transcriptionists are in high demand, according to Bankrate. Transcriptionists listen to tape recordings on a headset and use a foot pedal to pause or rewind the tape when needed. While listening to the tape, transcriptionists type the text into word-processing software. The typed transcript is reviewed by the health care professional who dictated it, and after edits the document goes into a patient's permanent medical file. At first, medical transcriptionists earn around $10 an hour. This can go up to $20 or more per hour.
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