Medical transcription artists have got to be some of the most patient people ever placed on this earth. As a physician, I look forward to finding the next humorous dictation errors. I have watched in horror as physicians dictate on their cell phones. I have done it myself as a resident years ago. I have watched fast doctors and doctors with thick accents plow their way through dictations as if they had a plane to catch. I have watched and wondered in silence how painful this must be for the transcriptions struggling in silence, sitting there and hitting rewind one hundred times to try and figure out what the heck the doctor was trying to say. I'm wondering if these folks are required to courses on how to deal with the difficult doctor.
I have seen medical transcriptions with half of the history left blank because they couldn't understand what the doctor was saying. So how do you make sure what you said is what gets typed? Here are a few courtesy rules all doctors should follow when dictating
- Dictate on a land line. Cell phones are a no no.
- Don't eat or chew gum or drink while dictating.
- Find a place with low nuisance noise. Sometimes I find myself dictating while the cleaning lady is vacuuming the floors. That's frustrating.
- Speak slowly. Ha! Ha! I know. That was a good one.
Of of the funniest medical transcription error or dictation errors I've seen in a long time was the description of a transbronchial aortogram with runoffs, which for the non medical types out there would involve placing a camera into the lungs, then proceeding to pass a needle from inside the lung into the aorta, the main blood vessel of the body.
I'll place a few of my funny dictation errors I've witnessed as I remember. Make sure to check out the comments for other great humorous mistakes as well.
- Saw this funny radiology transcription error the other day. Or maybe it was a dictation mistake. Or maybe it was intentional. Regardless, when the radiologist starts providing commentary on the status of your clinical picture, you know it's possibly time to throw in the towel. What was this funny radiology transcription report? It was from a chest xray and it said: "right infiltrate has slightly, regrettably improved" I'm think, just maybe, this patient was this radiologist's mother-in-law.
- "Double stranded dizziness titer" instead of double stranded DNA titer.
- "Patient was raped and prepped in routine fashion" instead of "patient was draped and prepped in routine fashion".
- "Patient presented with a pannus attack" instead of a panic attack.
