The field of Medical Transcription is wide open and an ever increasing and important aspect of the health care field. But what is Medical Transcription? In a nutshell, Medical Transcription is the process of translating, interpreting and then transcribing what a doctor or other health care professional dictates into an accurate, readable paper reproduction. The medical transcriptionist may transcribe treatment procedures, patient status, diagnosis and more from notes or from a recorded message. Medical Transcription requires a complete knowledge of medical and pharmacological terms and their associated illnesses, although more and more medical transcriptionists are specializing in a particular niche.

Until recently, most transcriptionists would transcribe from dictated recorded messages but like all walks of life, technology has also had a dramatic effect on this profession. Today, some transcriptionists are using voice recognition software to interpret the dictated messages and then spend their time editing the output. However, because voice recognition software is far from perfect and the recordings are not always of the best quality the editing process can span just a few minor corrections to a complete rewrite and this may never change because of the wide variety of speech variations among doctors and other health care professionals.

In addition to medical terminology knowledge, a highly trained medical transcriptionist must also have very good listening skills because the core of medical transcriptionists still type while listening to their dictated messages. Once typed the medical transcriptionist must also be able to properly edit the copy for proper grammar and convert, hap-hazard sentence fragments into meaningful and accurate sentences.

Medical Transcription has a long history. It's been discovered in documents of lost civilizations and in ancient caves but regardless of how the transcription was being done, the purpose remains the same - record an accurate record of a patient's medical treatment, history and status.

Medical Transcription was assigned its own job classification in 1999 and those practicing it were officially called medical transcriptionists. Previously, they were called medical secretaries, word processors, dictating machine operators or typists, which was a poor representation of what they did.

Medical Transcription has become an essential aspect of the health care industry and this trend will continue as the industry becomes more and more technology based and because health care workers simply do not have the time to legibly document all the information they gather on patients. It's more efficient to have someone who specializes in transcription do it so they can spend most of their time with patients.

After a few years of education and training, a medical transcriptionist can get plenty of work from medical transcription firms, which in turn receive their work directly from individual doctors or in some cases from an entire medical clinic.

The American Association for Medical Transcription is currently the governing body that certifies medical transcriptionists in the Untied States. Although certification isn't required to work as a medical transcriptionist, certification from the AAMT will increase your stature and credibility in the marketplace.

Medical Transcription is evolving; it's no longer simply listening and then transcribing a dictated message from a doctor. It requires much more like: specialized medical language training, knowledge of Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes, anatomy, pharmacology, physiology, medical reference material techniques and much more.

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