If the call center industry has Accent /English/Communication trainer, the medical transcription industry realized their need for one as well. As a BPO industry handling sensitive medical reports for clients based in the US, accurate transcription (grammar, spelling, punctuations aside for medical knowledge) is also deemed necessary to keep the jobs coming in.
My coming to as an English trainer to the medical transcription industry came a year ago when I was having that "what's next feeling" after being in the academe for more than 13 years. I answered an ad that seeks to have an English teacher with a call center experience (yes, I also tried my hands on that) on board to teach basic grammar to potential and existing workforce of the company.
Needless to say, I jumped at that opportunity and realized how language competency can spell your chances of nailing and staying in that job. The crowd that I met came from various educational background. From highschool graduates to licensed medical health professionals and practitioners, and even non-medical professionals. Yes..., name them and we have them. That is how diverse is the medical transcription workforce.
When I came on board, only 10% of English training is provided to them and the other 90% percent is on medical and computer training. This was based on the premise that the English these workforce learned during their schooling days would suffice to meet the industry's needs. However, the varying language competency of the adult learners, their individual language issues and the complexities of our "dictators" gave rise to more and more medical reports not meeting the clients' standards.So it was no wonder that "transcription accuracy"became an issue. .
What makes it truly surprising is the fact that errors found in the report is not medical in nature but "simple, common sense English words" as the client puts it.
Unlike the call center industry were cheat notes are available to follow and a sensible adlib could be quiped in like a pro,it's a different tune for the medical transcription industry. The accuracy of the medical reports highly depend on how the medical language specialist has understood the (ESL) spoken/dictated text, and translate it to the written/transcribed text.
A weak foundation in basic grammar coupled with non-familiarity with the dictators' accent and idiolects often result to medical reports categorized as defective.
So the more defected reports churned out, the more monetory loss it is for the company which can be eventually translated to losing potential source of income for the workforce.
These issues made the training team reassess their training flatform. They eventually agreed to allocate more time for English training which as they say "could have been avoided in the first place" if this aspect has been taken cared off way back in school. (Ouch!)
Having had the baptism of fire, now that I am a part of business sector. I make an earnest appeal to educators, teaching institutions and those involve in teaching and training to make a collective effort of strenthening our learners' language skills.
I would'nt say that I have gained mastery over my English competency for the many years I have been teaching English. Like everyone else, I still have so many things to learn and flaws to correct but one thing that really hit me hard is the realization if maybe .... just maybe our educators can see things from the industry's point of view, then they could sit down and collaboratively come up with a plan that could empower and train our learners to be lingusitically competent to be industry-ready.
