Thursday, March 29, 2007

Funny Work Thing

Whenever a new "customer" (per our company's policy, we no longer have patients...or clients...they are "customers") is admitted to our program, I perform an hour to hour and a half comprehensive medical history and physical examination. I then dictate this assessment, identifying all pertinent diagnoses...from ingrown toenails to head lice to whatever...and develop a treatment plan with referrals and recommendations for additional care needed beyond my scope of practice..i.e. ...dental, vision..etc. This dictated document is generally 5-6 typed pages. In an interesting cost savings maneuver, our transcription service has been farmed out to someplace in Nepal. Yes..Nepal. We are in Alaska. Global community? Whatever. Anyway....there are some interesting and unique interpretations of medical descriptive terms that have come across my laptop for editing. Such as:

Under medications, herbs, nutritional supplements:
My dictation: " reports chamomile tea several times daily for relaxation"
The finished transcript: " reports camel milk tea several times daily..." cute. But it costs me time/keystrokes to make the edits, and if my records ever ended up in court for any reason...i can just imagine some attorney grilling my but about where folks get camel milk in Alaska....

My dictation: "complains of discharge with foul odor"
The finished transcript: "complains of discharge, smells like chicken".....it took me a second...foul..fowl..chicken....

I am not making this up!

9 comments:

Grace said...

thanks so much for the chuckle!!!
Its funny there is anyone left in Nepal to work more then half my apartment complex is from there originally

Joan said...

ROFL!!

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, that makes sense. Let's ship those medical records overseas when we have people who read and speak English very well looking for work in the same state, heck even the same town. And let's make more work for the medical professional who generated the original report. Great.

jayne said...

I'm two for two here. The Webring sent me to Suzann (who has a truly unbelievable post today); then it sent me here where again, I am laughing. Then I saw the "excited" expression on Pearl's face, and I was done in. Slain by the funny. Your Kiri monologue is the icing on the cake. Evil knitter named Joan. ROFLMAO.

Mmmm...chocolate...

Anonymous said...

That's too funny, Lisa! Love the camel milk tea! Snort! But I'm sure is totally annoying to have to check/edit that carefully.
Good luck with it!
Les

Anonymous said...

I have had many instances like that, too, except the transcriptionists were from Michigan.

sk said...

I bursted into tears in Suzann's blog, now camel milk and chicken soup.

smariek said...

Oh, I am so glad I wasn't sipping wine while reading this. Too funny. I bet you can collect enough of these to publish a book...

Anonymous said...

You couldn't make that up! We had a pt. go in to anaphylaxis last night. The first MD to arrive says, "what have we got?" and the nursing staff had to say, "she is allergic to chicken. she ate chicken for dinner" The MD gives us this WTF? look...what could we say? It's what happened. Who would believe this? Who would make it up? Lesson here, if you are allegic to something, don't eat it.