Medical Transcriptionist Salary
If you like to listen to dictated recordings and transfer them to text, a career as a medical transcriptionist may be right for you. Doctors and other medical professionals dictate notes and correspondence and then need this converted to written form. A transcriptionist handles this conversion while editing for clarity and grammar. In order to work in this field, a knowledge of medical terminology is required. In addition, diagnostic procedures, treatment assessments, physiology and anatomy will all be in these tapes so training must be completed in these areas. If this sounds good to you and you have done some research into the medical transcriptionist salary, you may wish to look more into this field.
Medical Transcriptionist Salary
If you choose to work in this field, the median hourly medical transcriptionist salary was $15.41 as of May 2008. Those who work in medical and diagnostic laboratories tend to make the most and have a median hourly wage of $17.26. Those who work in business support services tend to have the lowest median hourly wage at $14.52. Compensation does vary greatly though among companies and this is something that you will need to look into in terms of the medical transcriptionist salary. Only you can decide if the wages are enough to compensate for the training needed.
Medical Transcriptionist Training and Education
Most employers hire those who have completed coursework in medical transcription although a few will train on the job. Training in this field is offered in a number of ways. You may choose to complete coursework at a community college or technical school although many prefer to take advantage of a distance learning program. The certificate program usually takes one year to complete while the associate’s degree program takes two. If you already have experience in the medical field in some capacity, you may be able to complete a program sooner.
Medical Transcriptionist Certification
Some choose to obtain voluntary certification also and two options are offered. The choice as to whether or not to become certified is completely up to you. A Registered Medical Transcriptionist is one who has less than two years experience in acute care or one who has just completed an educational program. In order to obtain this designation, the AHDI level-1 exam must be passed. A Certified Medical Transcriptionist requires that you have a minimum of two years of experience in a number of areas and a certification exam must be passed here also.
Job Growth Outlook For Medical Transcriptionists
Job growth for medical transcriptionist is expected to grow at a rate of around 11% between the years 2008 and 2018. This data is taken from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and represents around the average growth for jobs in the United States.because of the increasing aging of the baby boom generation, jobs in this field will continue to grow. While a certain amount of jobs will be outsourced overseas to countries like India, Pakistan and others, it is expected that those jobs will still need editing and proofreading by local American medical transcriptionist. Therefore, jobs won’t be completely replaced by outsourcing. Another area of concern for medical transcriptionist have been the innovation of voice-recognition technology within the workplace. However these technologies are still not able to fluidly capture human language and therefore also need qualified medical transcriptionist to proofread their output.
As with most jobs those medical transcriptionist with the best certification and training will have the best chances of landing a great job with high-paying salary. Many online resources are available in terms of certification and training so be sure to do some further research. Good luck!
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