Does my typing speed matter??

I know that a lot of people say they are slow typers and that they would never make money at this....not true. Also, I thought I was quite a fast typer and thought that would be the reason I would make GREAT money at this...not true. Yes, the faster you type, the more it helps, but there are sooo many other things that go into consideration.

Expander: This is the number 1 key to your production. You buy software that expands word, phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs for you. They can be as simple as:

t=the
w=with

or there are times that I will have a whole procedure typed out. For example:

pkp=Patient was prepped with Betadine. She was numbed with lidocaine jelly. A 17-French flexible cystoscope was inserted atraumatically into the urethra and advanced under direct vision into the patient’s bladder. Course and caliber of the urethra were within normal limits. Within the bladder, there were no tumors, stones, diverticula, or trabeculation noted. Complete cystoscopy was performed including retroflexion of the scope. The patient tolerated the procedure well. She was able to void spontaneously after the procedure. She was given a single dose of oral antibiotics after the procedure as prophylaxis.

That just typed 10 lines of dictation, simply by typing three letters. "pk" is the initials of the doctor I am typing for an "p" is for procedure. I have a procedure set up for all of my urology doctors because they dictate this often.

I also have the "ABCZ" method of any word over six charachters set up in my expander. This means the first three letters and the last letter of each word. For example:

fiba = fibromyalgia
rady=radiographically

I also use the ABCZ method for a lot of words I have a hard time spelling and many medications that I repeat often.

There are so many other things to do with an expander as well and I am still learning new things every day. It seems like it would be hard to get used to all of your expansions, but eventually your mind just starts thinking in ABCZ mode or your phrase abreviations are easily remembered. I also add new words to my expander daily and the day I stop doing this, is the day I will worry, because the more words I am adding, the faster I am getting, and give myself my own raises.

My expander types anywhere from 48% to 80% of my typing for me. I type about 80 wpm without an expander and about 200 wpm with an expander, so you can see typing speed is not a big issue.

Medical Spellchecker-This also helps with production!! The course comes with Dorland's Medical Spellchecker and it works just great. I did upgrade to Stedman's because I felt it was more helpful (also anything you purchase can be a tax deduction if you are an IC). It will automatically highligh mispelled words and you can simply right mouse click them and MOST OF THE TIME the word is right there, especially helpful for medications.

Internet and Software Knowledgable- This will help you more than you know. I went to school for a couple of years and thought that schooling may have gone to a waste, but really it has helped me TONS!! Most of your companies will use Microsoft Word for their software and the more you know about it, the better. I use a lot of keyboard commands where needed (ctrl C, ctrl V, ctrl B, etc.) The less you have to take those fingers off the keyboard and not use your mouse, the better. In my spare time I try to look up more "hot keys". I also learned so much about page setup, margins, and headers/footers that have helped me.

If you know your way around the Internet, it will help you too. I simply use Google or Yahoo as a search for most things and then I have my favorite sites to look up medications, doctors, etc. If you do one specialty over and over, eventually you will have hardly any research to do. I rarely look up anything for urology or phsycial therapy because I have typed them for a while now and they are so repetative. I still look up quite a bit for dental because I am still new to it.

I hope this answers a few questions :)