Outstanding MTs are not born – What are the traits that need to be developed to become an outstanding MT

By birth, no one is born with extraordinary talents; all of us are born with an empty mind and with a fewer talents and capabilities.  We pick up many things and learn as we grow older that are required for the livelihood; the only difference is someone picks up and learns faster and someone picks up and learns slow.  No one becomes a superpower or outstanding person overnight.

Success and failure basically go hand in hand.  Success gives us a sense of joy and pride, and failure discourages and depresses us, but we should not forget that in the battle of life, failures do come.  In that case, we should not lose heart and give up trying again.  Man is imperfect, so he often stumbles in life. Misfortunes try him, as fire tries gold.

In the field of medical transcription, many come into the field with great hopes and aspirations.  In short, when we enter into the field, we do not become outstanding overnight.  In the field of medical transcription, some of us fail continuously in spite of best efforts.  As the saying goes, failure is the stepping stone to success, we should keep trying again and again without getting discouraged.  We must study the causes of our failures, and realize our defects.  It will surely help us in achieving success in our attempts.  Failure, therefore is not a hindrance, but a help, not a bane, but a boon.  Life is a sum total of experiences and failures. It adds to our experiences and opens our eyes.

If we look into history, nothing great has ever been achieved without consistent effort in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties.  A child for instance can seldom learn to walk, without making sustained and sincere efforts in the process tumbling and falling down a number of times.  His failure never deter him to stop standing again.  The doggedness in the child’s resolve lies in making any number of attempts to stand up and walk whatever be the pain or fear of fall.

Thus, outstanding MTs are not born.  MTs need to learn continuously with great patience and must keep trying, but never give up at any point.  Why do I say that, here are few examples,

Albert Einstein Einstein did not speak until he was four and did not read until he was seven, and his teachers and parents thought he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. But he caught on pretty well in the end, winning the Nobel Prize and changing the face of modern physics.

Michael Jordan Most people wouldn't believe that a man often lauded as the best basketball player of all times was actually cut from his high school basketball team. 'I have failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeeded.

Walt Disney, today Disney rakes in billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt Disney himself had a bit of a rough start.  He was fired by a newspaper editor because, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas.  After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn't last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure.  He kept plugging along, however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked.

We need to understand that in order to gain success, and to become an outstanding MT, we need to learn some traits and develop some skills, which will help in achieve better restuls and to become an outstanding MT.

1.  Sincerity.  Be sincere in your efforts and actions.  Don’t try to deceive or impress others.  Be yourself.  Be enthusiastic about what you do.  Show it.  Be committed to work completely with strong determination.

2.  Sound judgement.  In the field of medical transcription, we must have sound judgement and ability to think differently to make right decisions at the right moment.

3.  Knowledge.  Knowledg is the key to open the door ignorance.  We need to update ourselves with everything.  We need to read lots and lots of literature like articles, books related to medicine and general knowledge, which will enhance power of understanidng and vocabulary.

4.  Listening skills and reasoning.  Here, we need to understand one thing, we are not typists who keep tying whatever the dictator dictates.  We need to reason out what the doctor says, why he says, and then we need to transcribe.  There is a difference between transcription and typing.  We need to be very cautious about every sentence, every word, and we need to make sure that it makes some sense.

5.  Feedbacks.  Going through errors is one of the important thing that every MT should do.  We need to keep correcting errors that we make and update with the new terminology.   It is another way of correcting ourselves where we often comit errors and falter.  We must try and learn new terminology that we encounters everyday, which will help improve our vocabulary.

6.  Attitude is one of the important trait that we need to nurture.  It is always necessary to develop positive attitude towards others and towards our work.  For example, H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K scores 8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%; K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E scores 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%; A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E scores 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100.

7.  Perseverance.  Successful medical transcriptionists have to have perseverance.  Perseverance is the ability to keep doing something with the knowledge that your efforts will pay off in the end.  In the field of medical transcription, there are constant setbacks that can deter a professional and affect one’s motivation.  We should always keep one thing in mind, “Never give up even if we fail n-number of times, we should keep trying.”

We should have love towards work rather than hard work because anyone is ready to do hardwork either manual or mental.  If we really love our work, we can certainly achieve better results.  I believe, with all these aspects, one should become outstanding in the industry.

- Joseph Deepesh