Yesssss!

I am thrilled to be able to share with you that I have accepted a part-time (for now) position as a remote Medical Editor/Medical Transcriptionist! The company I will be working with has a good reputation among MTs. I am awaiting scheduling for training on the transcription platform and then will be under mentoring for a while as I learn the platform, the specifications of my assigned accounts and the dictators on those accounts. Even with prior MT experience, this is the process that takes place.

It was weird/scary thinking about doing MT work again. After refreshing my transcription skills through an online acute care (hospital dictation, which I did before), I felt fairly confident; however, applying for employment and going through that process was a bit nerve-wracking. After all, I haven’t interviewed for a “real” job in 8 years. Narrow that down to a technical/professional position and it has been 9 years. Yoinks!

I always enjoyed MT work. It is fascinating, one learns something almost every day and there is a dark/silly sense of humor that one entertains working in the medical field. I’ve missed that.

You should have seen how excited and hyper I was the other evening after receiving the offer earlier in the day! Dave rode the wave with me in such a supportive and joyous fashion. He’s a good guy.

The profession of medical transcription has changed since I was last working in the field.  Back then, one listened to the dictation voice file and typed the document (known now as “straight typing”), sculpting it into a medico-legal document – correct not only in medical terminology, but in grammar, punctuation, etc. Typing, typing, typing.

Voice recognition – where the voice dictation is interpreted by a software program into a document – was pretty much in its infancy regarding widespread use when I worked in the field 8 years ago. Now, however, VR (or SR for “speech recognition”) has infiltrated to the point where the “medical transcriptionist” has become the “medical editor.” This is exactly that – editing the VR-produced document to match the voice dictation file.

This “old dog” will be learning some new tricks!

So, this week so far has been brimming with activity. A second interview, pre-employment testing, today the tech support guy tweaking my computer (installing the platform, etc.), paperwork, emails, phone calls . . . whew.

The result is one goal realized – land an MT job. Yay!

I continue to work my virtual assistant job, which is also part-time. I am learning new programs and very much enjoy working with my boss.  My vision has been to have 2 revenue streams with 2 part-time gigs, and that is what is coming to pass. We’ll see how that goes. It will be a while before things settle down and I get in a groove; both schedules are flexible to a point, so I see that it may be a really nice thing.

There have been moments of, “My brain hurts.” Bwahahaha!

This is a different type of thinking. With security work, the thinking was more physical (?) or action-oriented. “A strange car just entered the gates and headed towards the back. Better check it out.”  I could expect a phone call from the alarm company when an alarm would activate; we would then need to enter the building and check it out. Those are just some examples of the thought processes involved. Action-oriented. My thought processes are now of a more technical nature, i.e., learning software, reading/understanding written procedures . . . more of an intellectual process, if you will.

Yep, my brain hurts.

I am actually enjoying all this. Yes, in a perverse way, eh?

The focus so far – because it is happening so rapidly – has been on my securing MT work. We have yet to put the same time and energy into finding something for Dave. We are hopeful just the right part-time or full-time gig will come along for him. We know it will. In the meantime, he is enjoying the heck out of cycling here. He deserves that, as he took the brunt of the work load in South Carolina and did not sleep well at all there. In fact, he got very little sleep and was exhausted pretty much from October 2014 until now.  Yes, he is sleeping well now, thank goodness. All 3 of us are!

Hey, it’s early days yet. We haven’t even been here 2 weeks! I think we’re doing pretty darn good to be accomplishing so much in so little time.

We are managing to have some “together time” during the days/evenings, and that is important. I whipped up one of our favorite meals of chicken noodle casserole this afternoon, so we had a nice dinner with leftovers for tomorrow. Yay again!

Maggie is doing well and enjoys looking out the windows

I was working up until almost 10 PM and needed some decompression/fun time, so here I am blogging. It’s a hair past 11 PM now. I’m winding down and so is this post.

Thanks for stopping by! Ya’ll stay safe out there, okay?