Success as a medical transcriptionist is entirely dependent on your ability to produce high quality reports. After you've gained foundational knowledge in medical terminology and anatomy, the best way to develop and improve your skills as a medical transcriptionist is to practice, practice, practice. The leading training programs offer the opportunity to practice on hours of dictation from actual doctors so that you'll be prepared for the workplace after graduation.

To make the most of your training experience, make sure your medical transcription course includes plenty of hands-on practice. You'll also want to make sure your practical experience includes:

• Wide Range of Medical Specialties – There's no telling what kind of accounts your future employer will have, so you'll want to be prepared for everything. There are over 25 different medical specialties (such as cardiology, internal medicine, pediatrics, etc.), and you'll want to choose a training program that gives you practical experience in as many as possible.

• Variety of Accents – A growing number of doctors and healthcare providers speak English as their second language, and even those who are native English speakers don't always enunciate clearly. Choose a training program that offers a significant portion of the practical experience reports from dictators with accents (such as Hispanic, Australian, Asian, southern, etc.). Practicing on reports that include a variety of accents will put you ahead of the curve when you get to the workplace because these are generally the most difficult accounts.

• Different Levels of Difficulty – It's not possible to improve if we never try anything harder, and the same is true of medical transcription skills. You have to start out on easier reports, but it's important that your training includes reports from all different levels of difficulty so that upon graduation you’ll be prepared for even the toughest reports your new job throws at you.

• Medical Transcription vs. Medical Editing – More and more healthcare facilities are making the switch to speech recognition technology (learn more in our Future of Medical Transcirption article), which has created a new medical transcription editing (also known as medical editing) role. If you are planning on a long term career in medical transcription, you’ll want to choose a training program that prepares you for both of these roles, and an important part of that preparation is hands-on experience. Choose a training program that offers you the opportunity to practice both straight medical transcription and medical editing on authentic files.

One of the most important things that separates a great medical transcription course from the others is the amount of practice if offers its students. Make sure that you’re truly prepared for a medical transcription job by choosing a training program that gives you plenty of practical experience.