For MTs like me, in the process of re-assessing our skill set and knowledge base to figure out how and where we fit into the changing face of healthcare documentation, the answer to "what's in a name?" deserves careful consideration.
We've had various titles before, of course, but it was largely matter of preference whether to be known as a medical transcriptionist or a medical language specialist. The latter had a nice ring to it, and some of us chose the appellation on that basis alone.
It seems that while we readily adopted "transcriptionist" to set our skills and knowledge apart (accurately) from secretaries, typists, etc., most of us became medical language specialists only when we spiffed up our resumes or introduced ourselves at cocktail parties.
As it turns out, even if the majority of MTs had become MLS(s? Where's that BOS when I need it?) and HR analysts had backed that up, we'd be due for another look at this today regardless.
Setting aside for a moment the ripples throughout HIM that EHR/EMR is only beginning to create, many of which will wash over our workstations: Speech recognition technology itself already has created the sub-specialty of editing. But are these practitioners to be called medical editors? ME is too commonly associated with a medical examiner, decidedly not within our purview. SR editors? We know what that means within the MT community, but it's a bit broad.
Let's not forget that some of us do both straight transcription and editing, often going back and forth between the two over the course of a work day. It almost seems as if this was the right place all along to apply "medical language specialist".
However, if it was just a matter of progressive technology continuing to change the mechanics of how we do our jobs, this exercise might be seen as a bit of artificial puffery along the lines of trash collectors (whom I respect a great deal, by the way) being called sanitation engineers. We were transcriptionists when word processors replaced typewriters, we were still transcriptionists when PCs came along, and who do MTSOs hire today for speech recognition editing? Transcriptionists. Or, at most, MT/editors.
But it's not just the mechanics that are changing now. With EHR/EMR implementation, and ICD-10 looming on the horizon, the entire process of how healthcare documentation gets done -- and by whom -- is getting a makeover. We'd like to remain necessary players in the game, but it's hard to wrap our hands around potential positions on the new field.
I've asked, "who am I, if I'm not a medical transcriptionist?" as a part of my introduction to this blog, and it's not a rhetorical question. I am smack in the middle of figuring it out. Yes, as of today at least, that's still my job title. But if I'm to define the label on my particular package of skills, knowledge, and experience as it relates to the bigger picture in healthcare documentation, I've also got to figure out how to boil that all down to "Hello, my name is Mona and I'm a ___" in a way that doesn't put me right back into a box yet isn't too broad, or (heaven help us) self-important.
The minutiae of semantics in this are being debated elsewhere, with consensus only that it's become critically important for our name to change.
Tempus fugit, my colleagues. If we're "documentation specialists", which is where things are leaning -- and I agree that it embraces what we already do as well as our value to the industry going forward -- then it might be wise to just take the leading adjective that's on the table and start using it. Soon. Today would be good. Paradigms don't change overnight, and our propensity to niggle words beyond a certain point isn't conducive to getting out of the MT box.
Accordingly, I'm going with "healthcare documentation specialist", and it's now my LinkedIn "headline". After all, I've always known I was a specialist, but until now it just didn't seem all that important to say so.
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