Should you take an Online Medical Transcription Course?

The question has at least 2 right answers... depending on YOU!

The answers are:

Yes, if you want a career that can be completely home based and let you earn up to $30,000 per year (or more)!

No, if it's the WRONG career move for you.

If it's the WRONG move, then taking an Online Medical Transcription Course (or off line for that matter)

If you're NOT cut out to be a medical transcriptionist, you could invest $4,000 in books, software, and training (not to mention a brand new computer) and never make a penny doing medical transcription.

So, for better or for worse, I'm going to try to tell you how to decide if an Online Medical Transcription Course is right for you.

From our experience, your choice in an Online Medical Transcription Course should be based on the credentials of the owners of the school.

There are many Medical Transcription schools online and off line that turn out a completely inferior transcriptionist.

In other words, such schools are good at taking your money but not producing qualified trainees.

When Renee chose a school, she chose one where the owners conducted a free orientation at our local community college. Even though the couse was entirely online, it was sponsored by the community college.

Community colleges tend to be so "image conscious" we were sure they'd never sponsor anything remotely "interesting" or "relevant" to the work at home field if the program weren't entirely legitimate. In fact we later learned this program was approved for retraining people who'd lost factory jobs. Is your school state approved for training workers?.

So when the owners were endorsed by working with our community college, we were fairly certain their Online Medical Transcription Course was "for real". If you're just taking a course without such a local endorsement, you may want to investigate DOUBLY HARD.

But there's more to this. A local community college can be wrong. We also suggest going to a school where the owners RAN A REAL MEDICAL TRANSCRIPTION BUSINESS... preferably one contracted with a hospital or other large clients with a variety of medical specialities.

It's one thing to type for a single, slow speaking, courteous physician in one specialty. It's another thing entirely to type for 50 doctors from New York City who come from 10 different countries and represent 20 different specialties!

Rest assured though that the owner of an Online Medical Transcription Course who served large multi-specialty practices will know how to produce competent transcriptionists who can live anywhere, work over a DSL line, and make a good living. If you hope to do the same, you need THAT kind of training and NOTHING LESS!

The owners of Renee's school had the air of professionalism about them. They didn't dodge questions. They had plenty of "war stories" about the field and were honest about the earnings potential.

This leads me to another point. If a school says you can make $100,000 per year easily... run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.

To be safe, "on average" according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical transcriptionists earn around $30,000 per year.

Some will earn much more... if they have exceptional typing speed, exceptional hearing, and exceptional desire. Our owners had some transcriptionists who earned $50,000 to $100,000 but that wasn't the norm. Most just wanted a nice, stable income with a certain amount of flexibility.

While it's ok for schools to use their "in house" text books, for the most part, the texts studied and software used should be "off the shelf" commercial grade software and recognized medical texts. In the real world, you will need to upgrade software get new books as new medicines come out, etc. You can't rely on any single school to be expert in all the fields you'll need to master as a transcriptionist so - like a college - a great Online Medical Transcription Course should show you were to get current expert resources in the "real world". Schools only use 100% proprietary curriculum to maximize their own profits. You should be able to buy your materials somewhere besides the school to make sure you're getting the best deal too.

Finally, an Online Medical Transcription Course that's honest about the difficulty should do PRE-SCREENING of applicants.

Orientations, pre-study assessments, sample lessons etc. should be required.

Why? Medical Transcription requires as much pure knowledge as any other medical field. One complaint my wife heard was a fellow student saying "I thought I'd just be typing, not have to go to medical school!" But, really, it's like going to medical school for 3 to 12 months depending on whether you're full time or part time and how hard you'll work. No slackers need show up! This is not a nice slow paced typing job. It's a critical time sensitive component of the medical field with quick, 99.9% accuracy required! Many will not pass the test and you should test yourself to see if you will LOVE doing this work or fail out because you're really bored by it all! No school will turn away people who insist on paying, but some effort should be made to make people understand the magnitude of the task ahead!

Let's summarize: Legitimate Online Medical Transcription Courses should have these characteristics:

1. Owners should have a state approved school if possible 2. Owners should have real world experience in a multi-specialty environment
3. Owners should have been frustrated with the "average graduate" of other schools
4. Owners should be honest about the earnings potential 5. Owners should use recognized expert texts not just their own in house publications 6. Owners should prescreen applicants to screen out those who will just be wasting their money.

Chuck & Renee Huckaby publish an page related to Online Medical Transcription Course information that goes into these and other issues regarding being a medical transcriptionist more deeply and welcome your visit.
About the Author

Chuck Huckaby publishes 1stHowToWorkAtHome.com. He and his wife Renee publish an information course about whether to enter medical transcription and how to succeed in the field if it's right for you... or how to avoid losing $4,000 by choosing the WRONG Career!

www.webeasyprofessional.com

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