Article Manager posted on June 18, 2010 09:13
The time to get into anything - whether it be a new career, an investment or a school - is just after its infancy and just before its mass explosion. That time for the medical transcription profession is right now.
The medical transcription profession is still fairly young. As a profession, it's really only been around for about 30 years. The first transcriptions were performed in the 1960s by physicians. But when the practice really started to catch on, in the mid-70s, physicians were too busy to do it all themselves. That's when physicians started hiring outside professionals to handle the medical transcription work for them. But there were no medical transcriptionists then.
Clerical workers of one sort or another, they were usually professional assistants, were used to conduct transcriptions. Secretaries and executive assistants were the most common professionals who were practiced at the art of dictation so they were a natural shoe-in for the medical transcription job. But the drawback was that many of them had no medical knowledge. Physicians and their staff still had to clean up documents for incorrect medical terminology and send it back for re-transcribing.
Software and computer technology in the 1970s and 1980s made medical transcription more accessible, and more necessary. By the late 1980s there were several thousand professionals trained in the use of the popular medical transcription software packages on the market. This can be marked as the true beginning of the medical transcription profession.
The 1990s saw an increase in medical transcriptionists working as medical transcriptionist professionals - that is, professionals solely dedicated to the art and practice of medical transcription.
The first medical transcription association was started in 1978, but the profession didn't get its own Department of Labor classification until 1999. By then there were several thousand working professional medical transcriptionists. Medical transcription schools started popping up in the 1990s as well, but the first decade of the 21st century gave rise to many more. In fact, many of the new schools are online training courses.
All of this is to say that the medical transcription profession is no longer an infant profession. That stage ended with recognition by the Department of Labor and a unique job classification. However, since then the profession has grown into its own. There is still a lot more growth that will be realized - but the profession is on the right growth track, which is why now is the best time to get in. Enroll in an online medical transcription course and join one of the fastest growing professions in the world.