A medical transcriptionist should be good at knowledge, skill and ability. To make good money or salary you should be have following 10 qualities.

1. Basic knowledge of medical terminology, anatomy, and physiology, disease processes, sign and symptoms, medication, and laboratory values. Knowledge of specialty (or specialties) as appropriate.

2. Knowledge of medical transcription guidelines and practices.

3. Proven skills in English usage, grammar, punctuation, style and editing,

4. Ability to use designated professional reference materials.

5. Ability to operate word processing equipment, dictation and transcription equipments like foot pedal.

6. Ability to work under pressure with time constraints.

7. Ability to concentrate.

8. Excellent learning skills

9. Excellent eye, hand and auditory coordination.

10. Ability to understand and apply relevant legal concept (e.g. confidentiality)

Date Dictated and Date Transcribed

These dates should be recorded to monitor dictation and transcription patterns as well as to provide documentation of when the work (dictation or transcription) was done. Some dictation and transcription systems are specially designed to automatically record these dates.

Health care reports are, among other things, legal documents. As part of risk management, dictation and transcription dates should be entered accurately and should not be altered.

Capitalize D and T and follow each by a colon and appropriate date, using numerals separated by virgules or hyphens.

Some facilities prefer to use six-digit dates and others, eight-digit. All these styles are acceptable.

D: 4/18/00
T: 4/19/00

D: 04-18-00
T: 04-19-00

D: 04/18/2000
T: 04/19/2000

Note: ASTM’s E2184, Standard Specification for Healthcare Document Formats calls for identification of the place of dictation as well.

When the month, day, and year are given in this sequence, set off the year by commas. Do not use ordinals.

She was admitted on December 14, 2001, and discharged on January 4, 2002. not ...January 4th, 2002 (4th is an ordinal)

Do not use commas when the month and year are given without the day,
or when the military date sequence (day, month, year) is used.

She was admitted in December 2001 and discharged in January 2002.

She was admitted on 14 December 2001 and discharged on 4 January 2002.

When to use a.m., AM; p.m., PM ?
Acceptable abbreviations for ante meridiem(before noon) and post meridiem(after
noon), with the lowercase forms being preferred. Formal publications use small capitals, which, if available, may also be used in transcription.

8:15 a.m. or 8:15 AM or 8:15..AM

Do not use these abbreviations with a phrase such as in the morning, in the evening, tonight, o’clock.

8:15 a.m. not 8:15 a.m. o’clock
10:30 PM not 10:30 PM in the evening

Use periods with a.m. and p.m. so that a.m. won’t be misread as the word am.
Do not use periods with the uppercase AM and PM.

Insert a space between the numerals preceding these abbreviations and the abbreviations themselves, but do not use spaces within the abbreviations.

11 a.m. or 11 AM not 11a.m. or 11AM not 11 a. m. or 11 A M