Memorial Day

Memorial Day, celebrated on the last Monday of every May in the United States, is a time of rememberance for our country's men and women who have died in service to America. It is a day to honor the sacrifices these brave Americans portrayed to help keep our country free. For medical transcriptionists, this day might hold memories of medical reports transcribed to preserve the medical record of one or more of these men and women.

Memorial Day is also viewed by many as the unofficial start of summer activities. This becomes a very busy time of the year for health care workers as accident rates begin to soar while more people spend their time on the road, at pools or lakes, at sporting events, and other such activities. Help to keep your family safe this summer by practicing safety rules and precautions. View my previous posts for some of these tips and guidelines as well as links to other informative sites.

Have a happy Memorial Day and a safe summer!

What Do You See?

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."

-- Author unknown.

What do you see when you look at a medical report you have just transcribed? Does everything look accurate? Sometimes first appearances can be deceptive.

While I was completing my online Comprehensive Medical Transcription course from the University of Central Oklahoma, I learned a very useful trick for viewing what I had transcribed with a new pair of eyes. Listening to the dictation a second time while carefully proofreading makes errors in word usage stand out like red flags. I realize that the experienced MTs reading my posts will already know this. However, if you are still in training or new to the field, this trick might make a difference for you.

One of my professional goals is to help educate other MTs while I continue to learn more myself. I have found that no matter how much knowledge I have gained, there will always be far more to obtain. Experience is often one of the best teachers, so I hope to broaden my field of view by learning from the experiences of others as well.

Quality Care Reporting

Value-based purchasing is a concept that might be seen more and more in the near future from health care providers. P.Q.R.I., or Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, is a program established by Medicare. During the summer, a federal law was established which provides a 1.5 percent pay incentive for physicians to report quality measures through this program.

As more physicians begin to utilize quality care reporting, it is estimated by researchers that an increased number of less-ill patients will be treated. This, in turn, could possibly be the next big breakthrough in health care as more serious illnesses are caught and prevented in the earlier stages. This turn of events might eventually bring about lower health care costs as patients are being treated before more costly treatments are needed to reestablish good health.

I hope everyone had a safe summer and a happy Labor Day! I am looking forward to resuming my medical transcription blog! I am going to be changing the format to a weekly review of events rather than daily postings.

Summer Safety Tips

With the onset of summer vacation, it is a good time to post some safety tips that might help keep you and your children safe as the summer fun begins this year!

• Practice common sense.
• Make clear safety rules for the whole family.
• Learn to swim and/or teach your children how to swim.
• Swim in familiar areas to reduce the risk of potential dangers.
• Set up a secure area for your pool.
• Be aware of where children are. Many lives are lost every year due to accidental drowning.
• Keep rescue equipment and emergency numbers near your pool.
• Wear life jackets.
• Follow all of the rules posted in the area where you and your family are swimming.

These are only a few safety tips. While there are no 100% guarantees that nothing will ever happen, following safety guidelines might prevent serious injury or death for you or for someone you love.

The American Red Cross has an extensive amount of information to educate parents and children about safety. Visit:

http://www.redcross.org/services/hss/tips/healthtips/safetywater.html to learn more!

Medline Plus also offers information and links for more safety tips and related health information. If you follow the link below, you will find:

• Overviews.
• Latest news.
• Information on specific related conditions.
• Information on related issues.
• Tutorials.
• Journal articles.
• Directories.
• A list of other related organizations.
• Statistics.
• Articles regarding health information for children and teenagers.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/watersafetyrecreational.html

Have a safe and happy summer!

Climbing the Mountain and Establishing Your Base

“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”

-- Author unknown.


It takes hard work and determination to reach a goal. However, to maintain that goal requires intelligence and inner strength. That willingness and desire to strive for and maintain excellence is what truly defines one’s character. A person must be willing to settle for nothing less than his/her personal best consistently to truly become distinguished from the crowd.

I believe that it is this same character that defines what a medical transcriptionist is. A medical transcriptionist ensures that every transcribed document is as good as it possibly can be; thorough and polished. Every detail counts, and a medical transcriptionist will leave no stone unturned to ensure the integrity of such work. That is why I have chosen medical transcription as my career. It is a profession in which excellence is consistently strived for and achieved.

A New Remedy for Baldness?

There was an interesting study done recently at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. There were articles published about the study in the journal Nature and for Reuters Healthdescribing how scientists discovered that mice with deep skin wounds can regrow hair. The dermatology professor who led the study, Dr. George Cotsareli, would like to see the idea of applying compounds to get epidermal cells to turn into hair follicles to become a precedent for future remedies for male-pattern baldness and similar causes for hair loss.

Dr. Cotsareli cautions that the time frame for seeing such ideas become marketable might not even begin for up to five more years as further research is done. Dr. Cheng-Ming debated that while the study might show that hair could grow from adult skin, the data was still inconclusive because human skin is different from that of the mice on which the experiments were performed. Dr. Cheng-Ming is a professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, though he was not actually involved in the study itself.

Both doctors felt that regenerative and repairative tissue were vitally important to this process of hair growth beginning at the locations of the wounds. It is still not decided whether or not the epidermal cells would turn into hair follicles in humans if the wounds were not allowed a comparative amount of time to heal as in the case of the mice.

The American Red Cross is 126 Years Old Today

On May 21, 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. The volunteers who make up this organization give disaster aid both nationally and internationally. They supply close to 50% of America's donated blood and blood products, as well as contribute to society through biomedical research.

The American Red Cross is also known for helping to bridge the communication gap between military personnel and their families. Other organizations are beginning to follow this lead to recognize the needs of our Nation's military personnel, as noted in my post from May 6, 2007.

In addition to all of these objectives, these volunteers serve through mitigation and education. They help to keep the public informed on a number of safety topics (such as some of the safety tips posted on Saturday), and by such the American Red Cross also strives to help prevent accidents.

To find the Red Cross nearest you, or to learn more about this organization, please visit the link below!