Transcriptionists, how to improve typing speed and productivity?

Okay, now that you have chosen medical transcription as your career accidentally or willfully, you are concentrating on churning out more and more lines day by day and are thinking, trying and practicing on the ways to reach that goal. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Here are some tips and tricks that I tried and employed as I started from around 200 lines a day to until I peaked out to around 4500 lines a day. May be these tips can be useful for you too.

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Control/employ these factors that are directly related to your work:

1. Keep all that you need for transcription or those that may intercept you during transcription within your reach; may be it’s your phone, wearing glass or books for referring. Keeping a bottle of water near your work station can avoid multiple walks to the cooler for drinking water.
2. If you are working as a home transcriptionist, try to seclude yourself to a room with less disturbance and distractions as these are the cons of home transcription.
3. Install soft copies of Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Stedman’s Electronic Medical Dictionary and Quick Look Drug Series so that you can refer and clear doubts within a few seconds with just a few keystrokes or clicks. Install Spellex or Stedman’s Medical Spellchecker to your word processor for quick identification and rectification of spelling mistakes.
4. Bookmark web sites for reference for easy online reference. Ultimately, Google can fetch you all those reference material, hence you may set Google as your homepage.
5. One of the key points of medical transcription ergonomics is to lessen the use of mouse and increase the use of keyboard. Hence memorize/practice or take a printout and stick in front of you above your computer monitor The Microsoft Word Shortcuts if MS Word is your word processor.
6. Use word expanders.   There are numerous free text expanders like Instant Text, FlashType, SpeedType, As-U-Type, Saving Keystrokes etc.  Alternatively, you may go with macros or AutoText feature available in MS Word, or Quick Correct in Word Perfect whichever you are comfortable with. Feed those standard sentences into your word expanders to retrieve them easily with just a few keystrokes.
7. Prefer mechanical keyboard over membrane keyboard. Mechanical keyboards may produce that clackety clack sound like old typewriters, but I find it easy to type with them than their membrane counterparts.
8. If you’re not getting a word on the first go, leave a blank and don’t get struck and panicked with blanks. Try blank filling tips and techniques.
9. Practice makes a man perfect. Practice tough dictators. If you are a beginner, practice typing whenever possible. If monotony steps in while practicing typing, hook on to Type Racer where you can race with others online in typing. This could very well improve your typing speed. You could see the “recent high scores” there as high as 170 words per minute!
10. Set targets like ten minutes of dictation (or some amount of files) to be transcribed an hour and work on it.
11. Perform routine computer maintenance to avoid unnecessary hiccups, breakdowns and tension in between work.

These factors are not directly related to your work but can greatly influence your performance.

1. A healthy mind in a healthy body. Take good rest. Sleep at least eight hours a day.
2. Take short breaks; say five minutes every hour. You could utilize this time to walk to the cooler to have a gulp of water, stare outside to focus on a long object – a mild exercise to your eyes to lessen the possibilities of computer vision syndrome or could walk up to the toilet relieve the tension!
3. Keep the workplace clean and fresh with some flower vase/greenery in front of you. A clean surrounding brings an overall fresh mood. I have even cleared off my desktop so that only three-four shortcut icons are there.
4. If you have access to your doctor, who is a bit on the tougher side speaking into the microphone, you can encourage him going through Tips for dictating physicians. Enlighten him the necessity of producing quality documents by requesting him to watch AHDI’s Dictation Best Practices.

Now I’m back to 1500 lines a day as I started feeling a sort of boredom with my routines when I reached those 4500 lines a day. Now I have time to spend with my family, time for my hobbies, time to socialize; after all, just money can’t bring happiness in your life!

Did I miss anything to improve transcription productivity? Did I miss anything to improve typing speed? Do you have to say something about better transcription production? Share your experiences, tips or tricks too through the comments form.

Related Posts:

• Free Typing Programs Online to Practice and Improve Productivity
• Free Auto Text Word Expander Softwares For Medical Transcription
• Free Medical Transcription Softwares. Download & Resource Center
• The Microsoft Word Shortcut Keys
• Earnings of a Medical Transcriptionist