Naveen’s Blog

Being in the field of transcription for the last four years, associated with a company or a home-based transcription provider, I wanted to write a review about this field.  I get inquiries about medical transcription training and future prospects in Orkut and other forums where I participate.  This article can help the people whether or not to choose this field.  This review is limited to choosing medical transcription as a career in India, especially Hyderabad, and not in foreign countries.

I started my career as a medical transcriptionist in the year 2004.  At that time I was in the field of express cargo and logistics and there were frequent transfers to anywhere in India.  At that time, it was necessary for me to be in Hyderabad because of my education and my brother’s.  So, I started looking at other opportunities where I can get good salary, less stress, and somewhat interesting job.  At that time, medical transcription was catching up and heard good things about it.  So, I took the test, succeeded, and joined for transcription training.  Within a year or so, I was able to make the salary, which I was earning in my previous job.

It was good.  It has improved my English, communication skills, and presentation skills.  Being a Telugu medium student, it was so difficult for me to express my thoughts in good English.

After working hard for three years, I started realizing that there is little growth in this field.  Unlike other fields, it is difficult to reach higher levels.  At the same time, it is also easy to reach if you have exceptional listening skills.  There are three levels in this field, medical transcriptionist, proofreader, and quality analyst.  Becoming proofreader is very hard.  It requires exceptional listening skills, which everyone may not have and lot of transcriptionists end up at the stage of medical transcriptionist itself.  90-95% people leave their job after few years realizing that their pay is not going to rise.  A senior transcriptionist can earn anywhere from 10-15 thousands and proofreaders can earn anywhere from 15-25.  QAs will earn 5-10K more.  But, these salaries will become stagnant and one would get easily frustrated.  If you start your career lately in MT and realize after three or four years that your salary is not rising at the phase you thought, you certainly want to leave this field, but at that time you will also find that you have become “age barred” for other fields.  So, while choosing it as a career, think about it twice.  As soon as you realize that your skills are just limited to MT, then leave it as soon as possible and jump into another field.

Pros:

• Education and age are no bar in this field.  You just need to pass out a general English test.  That’s all!
• You will get chance to improve you written and spoken English skills, which are mandatory to succeed in any job.
• You will get an immense knowledge related to health, which is going to help you throughout your life.
• Flexible working hours, which is a hard-to-find thing in any other job.
• Low stressful job.
• You can work from home.  There are lot of companies ready to provide you work to do from home.
• Getting job in another company is just two or three days matter.
• You can walk into any MT company at anytime to see if they have openings and almost all companies will be ready to take the MTs/Proofers/QAs throughout the year, which you cannot see in any other job.

Cons:

• As stated above, pay hikes are limited, which is the main thing 90-95% people leaving this job after working for few years.
• Few MTs cannot progress towards the next level, proofreader, because of poor listening skills, which is not going to be improved with hard work.
• This experience will not help you get a job in any other industry.
• Wearing headphones, listening to voice, and typing keys for a prolonged period of time may cause significant health issues.

Related Posts:

1. Are you drinking enough water? Though I am a medical transcriptionist, I write more on...
2. Online Indian drug dictionary – Indian pharmacopeia Note: I am not a pharma student to answer your...