Career Option as a Medical Transcriptionist

The growth trend observed in the medical and health care industry in the recent past has resulted in great demand for trained medical transcriptionists as electronic documentation has become the best option for maintaining medical records with the health care organizations and government regulating agencies.

Medical transcription is defined as a process of immediate translation of the medical dictation given by doctors and other health care professionals and the conversion of this information into electronic form and then sharing these electronic files with the relevant authorities.

Professionals involved in the profession of medical transcription are called medical transcriptionists. No specific academic qualifications are required to be a medical transcriptionist but candidates should possess strong communication skills, writing skills and computer skills. They should be well versed in English language and should have good typing speed. They must have good knowledge of medical terminology and should be aware of the confidential nature of the medical history files of the patients. They are also supposed to have an understanding about various legal aspects involved in the record keeping of medical documentation. Normally, newly recruited medical transcriptionists are trained on the job so that they can perform their duties well.

Since this field is becoming competitive, employers now prefer candidates with a Certificate in Medical Transcription, which is a short term course. Authorized authorities such as Association of Medical Transcription offer courses in medical transcription for career aspirants. Candidates are certified as Certified Medical Transcriptionists after the successful completion of this course.

Certified medical transcriptionists are mostly employed by medical colleges, hospitals, health centres, clinics, health care organizations, medical transcription companies, private nursing homes and so on. Both part time and full time jobs are available and their major job includes typing the doctor’s dictation rapidly on the computer without any error. Though they are dealing with the confidential information of the patients, they actually do not have any contact with the patients.