A Medical Transcription Story... or Book

People keep asking me about my job so let me just tell you how it alllllll went down. This is gonna be LONG. If you don't read it I don't care. :) I'm just writing it in case people are interested, like I was a year ago.

Okay so a year ago I didn’t even know what medical transcription WAS. Like I had NO idea doctors talked into a recorder about their patients and someone needed to type these into reports. So how this all started was last September, when Nate lost his part-time job with the family business due to the economy. Yeah he has a great job at HAFB that he loves, but unfortunately when we moved here we budgeted with 2 incomes, so when we lost one, yeah it hurt, a lot. I can’t even tell you how stressed out we were. (and this is before we got pregnant!) We thought about selling/renting our house, Nate taking on some other job, me working at Walmart, I mean there was just no way we could even “get by” so we needed to do SOMETHING. Nate and I have never owned credit cards either, so the money we have is you know, the MONEY WE HAVE! (Did you even have any idea you could make it through life without a credit card, well I’m here to tell you we’ve traveled to foreign countries, rented cars, and bought 2 houses and we’ve never had a credit card, crazy huh? Maybe not so crazy coming from the person who has never owned a cell phone…)

ANYWHO. I worried about it like every night. We prayed a lot over it. Because while it was obvious we needed more $$ cause we really really didn’t want to move (or, you know, starve), the thought of having someone watch the kids while I worked made me depressed. As did the thought of working nights and never seeing Nate. And Nate had been spread so thin when he did have both jobs, I just thought there has to be another way. So I looked on the internet “JOBS FROM HOME” and other ways to make FAST MONEY! Yeah it was kind of a joke the things that are out there, they ended up being A) A SCAM AND A HALF! Or B) Just not reliable or worth it. I thought about selling stuff too but I knew I would A) HATE IT and B) Be horrible at it. Base income off my social skills? Ha ha!

Then I remembered a friend of mine (thanks again Melissa!) had mentioned something about working from home, so I asked her about it. And BOOM, she is a medical transcriptionist, works from home, works when she wants, makes great money, and LOVES it. I was like, oooh, tell me more! So she did, and I could not stop thinking about it. I kept thinking, I like medical stuff. I am a super fast typist. I am great at English. And this is a legitimate career, FROM HOME! something I could always fall back on. I remember laying in bed and then getting on the computer in the middle of the night to research this. I looked up the online school she went to, Career Step, read all about it, felt good about it, and signed up! This was last October.

So the website said you could do the schooling in as little as 4 months, though they give you a year to do it, and you can even pay to extend if you want. I honestly thought I would just work really hard and finish in 4 months and be on my way.

Then reality struck! Okay, the schooling was way interesting and the website was very user friendly and I LOVED learning new stuff. I finished the objective part in a month and a half and was like YES I am almost DONE! Then came transcribing 800 practice (but actual) reports. And somewhere in there I got SOOOO SCARED, like what the heck am I doing. It was harder than I thought, and I was like am I cut out for this? Is this going to be worth it??? WHAT am I doing I'm gonna fail! Not to mention I would hear how companies only wanted transcriptionists with experience, which of course- how do you get experience if no one will hire a new grad??!! I was Debbie downer for a couple weeks about the whole thing.

Then I don’t know what changed, but suddenly I just started to feel so good about it again, probably cause I could see the light at the end of the tunnel! Not to mention we got our tax refund which SAVED our LIVES and so the pressure was off of me to finish so fast cause we were taken care of for the next few months. Plus I started to read the Career Step forums a lot, where past and present students post just a TON of info, and it was nice to see people posting stuff about what I was feeling and everything just made me feel better. AND it was obvious that so many jobs were out there and people were getting them right out of school, and, most importantly, SO many people seemed to love what they did. So I made the big push to the finish and YEAH it was hard! And I was so dang nervous for the final, I was like, well let’s see if I learned anything.

So I took it in May and I passed with honors, 1% away from high honors (yes had to throw that in there) and within days I had 4 job offers. I was overwhelmed with what the heck to do, I mean, I knew I wanted part-time, so that eliminated a lot of companies who want new grads to be full-time. Some companies wanted you to work set hours, and while I could probably do that part-time, I really wanted one where I could just get it done throughout the day when I had time. With 4 kids I didn’t know if I could work SET HOURS, unless I did it way late at night. And I’m selfish, I want to play with Nate at night. Anyway it was hard to know if I should just accept a job, or wait to hear back from another company… I just kept applying to companies. The school gave you a list of companies willing to hire new grads, and so it was just easy to go online and either send in a resume and/or an application, and some want you to test with them first to even see if you are any good (And all the tests I took I passed, so I was happy!) But it was while looking up different MT companies (and there are literally HUNDREDS!!!!!!) that really made me see how reputable of a school Career Step is, I’d say half or more that I applied to had a link to Career Step on their website, so you know they think highly of their graduates, and that definitely gave me an in.

So in all, I applied to a total of 12 companies. Got official job offers from 4 of them.

3 of them gave me no response back.

One said I passed their test, but they wanted someone with experience.

One said they did hire new grads but they had no openings.

One told me I just needed to fill out a form and send it back (but they wanted full-time.)

One told me I did well on their test and they want to interview me (still have yet to interview with them though!)

And one told me I passed their initial screening test and to wait for them to email me with advanced testing. No email thus far.

Not bad eh?

I ended up taking a job with the very first company I applied for, one that was NOT on Career Step’s HUGE list of companies. It’s a smaller, local company, right here in Utah. I heard about it from a friend (thanks Lindsey!) and they just seemed so nice and so flexible that I decided to take it.

I started in July, worked for a bit, then had my baby, and although I was allowed 6 weeks off I was too anxious to get going again. I didn't want to forget the things I already learned, plus there's a huge learning curve with MT work, it takes awhile to build up your speed and make the money you want to (like I heard you really make bank after around 2 years of experience). So I started 2 1/2 weeks after having Kaitlyn. And I REALLY like it! Like REALLY! The bad news was that the training pay was next to nothing, mostly cause of how slow I was... okay i'm still slow, but getting better!

But NOW after 3 weeks of working after having Kaitlyn I got a big raise and it makes ALL the difference! Like I am so satisfied with my pay right now, and I know it can only go up from here. I will only get faster, and I have yet to start ER work, which will bring in more money. And I honestly honestly REALLY like transcription work! It is different every day. I know it's important to get done. And it is very interesting. AND I can do it in my pajamas while holding my baby. I love that I can get it done throughout the day when I can. Flexibility is so important to me... when my kids are all in school I know I am going to be like, how on earth did I do it with 4 tiny kids at home... well, sometimes I ask myself that now, which is why I've started to get up early in the mornings before they wake up so I can get the bulk of work done then. I'm still figuring all this out! And I know I just started and am just learning, but I am just so excited to have a job to supplement our income.

And Nate will be getting a raise in September, which will definitely get us out of the hole budget-wise.

I honestly did not think we could make it this far after we lost that income, but somehow we have made it. Thanks again, tax refund. But I do feel very blessed, because we have tried to stay up on our tithing even though this is the first time in my life I have like, gulped and closed my eyes as I hand the money over... but I know that we have been blessed cause of that. Things just fell into place.

Not that I am thinking YAY our money problems are OVER! I know when it comes to finances you just can't plan on stuff working out how you imagine, cause something else always seems to come up (like CAR TROUBLE!!!) But I know this will be a huge blessing to our family.

And that is my HUGE LONG Medical Transcription story. :)