The first thing to remember is that you have to get a good education to be a medical transcriptionist. You cannot just jump into this job blindly.

I will provide links in the links section below, but for starters you need to pick a school. Depending on how you learn, you can choose a local community college program, an online program or, for the especially daring yet studious, go it on your own.

Expect to take at least 6 months to learn medical transcription, and some programs can take 18 months or more to complete.

If you're reading this, you already have the most important piece of equipment for a medical transcriptionist - a computer!

Hopefully, that was a pretty obvious statement. However, there is more medical transcription equipment that you need. It's less than it used to be.

Used to be that you would need a transcription machine. They used tapes or mini tapes but took up a lot of room on your desk.

These days some transcriptionists probably still use tapes, but most have gone to online systems. The doctor dictates to that system, the transcriptionist downloads it, types it up and sends the doctor the report.

This means that you may only need software for listening to the dictation, which will vary by the system used, a foot pedal to control the playback, and headphones to listen.

However, you'll also need medical transcription books, lots of books. You can get away with using the various online resources, but sometimes a book is much easier to search, and certainly more reliable.

You finish your medical transcription training and start looking for a job.

Auggh! Everyone wants at least two years' experience! All that money down the drain!

Not quite, fortunately.

If you go through a reputable program, there are many companies who will waive that experience requirement. That's the entire reason you need to spend the money on the right training.

Some schools will have an employment office that can help you land that all important first job. If the resource is available, take advantage of it!

One of the areas that greatly confuses people looking to get into medical transcription is the title of Certified Medical Transcriptionist. If you're just getting into the industry it may sound like a great goal to aim for even before you get your first job. You may even think the program you are going through will give you that certification.

This is where many people make their first mistake. The certificate of completion that some medical transcription courses offer has nothing at all to do with becoming a certified medical transcriptionist. These are two entirely different matters.

For one thing, AHDI, the agency that offers the designation of Certified Medical Transcriptionist, does not allow you to take the CMT test before you have at least two years of experience as an acute care medical transcriptionist. The test is extremely challenging, and your typical graduate does not nearly have the knowledge to pass this test. Give yourself time and build up your experience.

If you really want something that shows your skills, you can consider trying the Registered Medical Transcriptionist test. The RMT designation is for less experienced transcriptionists who nonetheless wish to have proof of their skill level.

Fortunately, neither designation is required in order to land a job. I worked for three years in medical transcription without worrying about taking either of these tests.

There are, however, appropriate times to consider these options. Some employers pay CMTs more, for example. Why wouldn't you try to qualify for more pay if your skills justify it? If getting your CMT is the only way to do it, go for it! But if you aren't going to benefit financially, be clear on why it is you want to take this test.

I don't believe that getting an RMT is necessary either, but if you're needing that extra little boost to your resume, it may be worth reading up on to see if you want to spend the money to qualify. However, with good training from a well-recommended school you can certainly skip it.

When you're just getting started, the first thing you should be focused on is making the most of the training course you sign up for. Study the materials do the work, even do it twice if it helps you to really absorb the material. Don't be thinking about certifications you might want in the future. The quality of your training and how well you understood it will matter most to any potential employers.

After working as a medical transcriptionist for 3 years, I can tell you that it is often a highly frustrating job. After all, the doctor's patients are most often sick! This is not a job for someone who is excessively sensitive to verbal descriptions of medical problems.

You also have to deal with doctors who clearly would rather be doing anything other than dictating... and they often are. Eating, driving, using the bathroom, having conversations with other people, you just never know. It's your job to make sense of it all.

You're often best off laughing off the doctors' behavior and mistakes. They will make mistakes, such as the doctor who dictates that a patient is leaving the hospital alive without his permission. You hear sometimes about doctors having a god complex, but sometimes it seems to go a little far!

Errors in vocabulary can also be humorous, but you'd better catch them. Perineal and peroneal, for example. They sound the same and mean entirely different things. You can laugh at yourself if you catch yourself trying to make this mistake, but only if you catch it.

Same for errors in grammar or punctuation. You may find it amusing how very different a sentence is when you briefly misplace a comma. Just don't leave it misplaced. Sometimes you'll get an entirely different meaning.

Doctors and patients both may have interesting names. These can bring you a brief smile at the beginning of a report, and the wonderful part is you don't have to fix it when you've heard it right.

Then there are the times that a doctor will make body parts disappear when they really mean that the pain is gone. Or they'll add on an extra toe or finger somehow. Unless the patient has an unusual deformity, you know that five per hand or foot is normal.

Body parts can also wander. You may have to put in a note for clarification if it is not clear which part was actually meant. This is a part of why a medical transcriptionist needs to know so much about anatomy.

A sense of humor helps in this line of work, but only if you know when to leave it funny versus correcting the error. The work is, after all, quite serious in nature and you can easily impact the medical care a patient is receiving. Don't let the laughs over the mistakes you hear or make yourself impact patient care.