Do Nurses Need a Medical Transcription Education to Start Transcribing?
One question I often get is whether or not nurses need to go through medical transcription training in order to start working. They have so much background in medical terminology already that many hope they can just start working. Can they? No. Not really. While nurses and other medical professionals may be nicely up to date on medical terminology, drugs, procedures and so forth, transcription is another creature all together. You have to be able to spell all of the terminology correctly, which isn’t something nurses typically have to deal with. Nurses may feel that they are used to hearing doctors talk, but that’s not the same as hearing him dictate notes. I’ve read comments from nurses that they can’t believe that doctors expect transcriptionists to understand the dictation because they talk so fast and do so much else while dictating. Transcription is very much so an acquired skill. The good news is that nurses should be able to finish the training program more quickly. They already
