Now
that you are aware of some of the best productivity tips for medical transcriptionists,
we hope they are being put to good use. Here are some more tips and tricks for
smart professionals.
Get Comfy
Make
sure that your work environment is peaceful and quiet and that you are
comfortably seated…’coz bad seating may cost you and your employer terribly
high.Avoid work-related repetitive stress injuries by practicing proper seating
and positioning and through stretching exercises that relieve the wrist,
forearm, fingers, and back. It is also
essential to keep your workplace quiet because transcription requires a great
deal of concentration. Do not transcribe if there is a great deal of ambient
noise around you. If your workplace has a high amount of office traffic and
noise, you could consider talking to your supervisor about making suitable
adjustments.
Leave the Mouse!
Yes!
You’d wonder how you could possibly get rid of the desktop mouse. But it’s
important to understand that shifting hands between the keyboard and mouse
every now and then slows you down. Practice using keyboard shortcuts instead.
There are a multitude of keyboard shortcuts for all possible actions that you
perform with the mouse. These can be mastered in a jiffy.
Action
|
Keyboard Shortcut
|
Copy
|
CTRL+C
|
Paste
|
CTRL+V
|
Cut
|
CTRL+X
|
Delete
|
Delete button
|
Undo
|
CTRL+Z
|
Switch between windows and programs
|
ALT+TAB
|
Current window's system menu
|
ALT+Spacebar
|
Close or quit a program
|
ALT+F4
|
Close current window
|
CTRL+F4
|
Choose a function in the menu bar
|
ALT+underlined
letter in menu
|
Take Shortcuts
Those
who say there are no shortcuts to success don’t know where to find one! In
transcription, you can increase your productivity by using abbreviations. Word
processors have features in the spelling auto-correction options where you can
mention short spellings for commonly used words such as ‘surgery’ or
‘examination’. You could set the short spelling as ‘sgr’ and ‘exn’ for instance
and the word processing software will automatically expand the word every time
you type the short form.
You
could decide which short form to keep for each word and the word processor will
automatically change the short form to the full form as you type. Make sure you
identify commonly used words to store in the word processor.
In case of MsWord, click on the spell check button at
the bottom of the document and then choose “AutoCorrect” – in the options that
pop up, click on “AutoCorrect options…” – next, in the ‘AutoCorrect’ tab, you
will find an option that says “Replace words as you type”, make sure this is
checked. Here you can add the words that you’d like to be replaced with full
forms as and when you type.