Especially after that dictation has been erased. You might find the following statements in a patient's chart. Or, thanks to a mistake that was dictated but not caught, a surgeon might chop off a patient's left instead of right breast. Medical transcriptionists understand this because they constantly deal with physicians who have impaired language skills. Whether a physician dictates onto tapes or into a digital dictation system, the only other person who works with his dictation is the medical transcriptionist who converts speech into text.
Most people assume that anyone who has managed to become a doctor can produce a coherent sentence.
Many also contradict themselves in their dictation. When workers use substandard raw materials in the construction industry, they endanger lives. When doctors with impaired language skills cannot properly communicate their thoughts in English, they end up providing substandard data which can endanger a patient's life. Because most people examining medical records are looking at printed text and not listening to sound. They cannot begin to understand how much editing is necessary to clean up dictated text and correct a physician s mistakes before the data gets into the chart.