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Working at home is a situation that many people aspire to, to escape the rat race of commuting, paying for childcare, wear and tear on the car. Medical Transcription does indeed offer that to those willing to go through the training and get some experience under their belts.
If you want to work from home, you basically have two options: You can either start your own business, or you can telecommute. Medical Transcription is a career that provides you with both options.
There is a large market for medical transcriptionists. You can work from the hospital or physician's office or you can work from home. You can also start your own at-home medical transcription business. Medical transcription, at its core, is basically just listening to notes that a doctor has recorded about things such as exams, autopsies, operations and more, and typing out the recordings into a document that then is included in the patient's chart.
With the technology available today, the doctor can actually send you the recording over the internet, so you don't have to leave the comfort of your home at all! Medical transcription is not difficult to learn, but it can be somewhat expensive. Nowadays, there are several websites that offer books, CDs, DVDs, and online courses to help you learn the medical terminology that you need to know to do the job well.
When you do sign up for a course or buy learning materials, make sure they are worth your money. As a medical transcriptionist, you will need to know medical jargon such as abbreviations, terminology and medical terms, and only the right resources will give you all the information that you need.
It can be somewhat difficult when just starting out in transcription to get a work-at-home position. Lots of employers out there want you to have some intense quality assurance scrutiny before letting you fly, so to speak. So they want you in house if possible. Indeed, the U.S. Dept. of Labor notes that nearly 60% of transcriptionists work in an office somewhere.
But don't let that discourage you! It is still possible to get that at-home job. All it takes is perseverance.
If you have chosen a good program, they will probably have a job placement assistance program, and can tell you which employers are most likely to hire you to an at-home position. Also, you can ask other transcriptionists on Internet forums which companies are hiring "newbies" to work at home. Make a list of these, and go after them aggressively.
