Speech Recognition

by Robin Reynolds
(Axton, VA)

I am not a writer by no means but I just have to share my feelings on speech recognition. When I first heard these words, I thought "Oh no, there goes our jobs as medical transcriptionists". I lost my job working in a textile mill in the office because of sending work overseas. I had to start over in a new career at age 36 years old and the thoughts of starting anew again scared the heck out of me and also made me mad too. I had 2 days notice at my old job. Little did they know though I had taken a self study course in medical transcription and was ready for a new career when I lost that job. I had not had any exposure to speech recognition until March of this year. I left an office job to come home to work for a large company.

Well ladies, let me tell you, I love speech recognition! And to think I ever thought this computer was going to take my job, was I ever fooled. The words and things it types keeps me laughing all day long. They have got to do a lot of perfecting of what I see before they can get rid of me. Yes, it does change our job role somewhat, but I really enjoy editing the work. It gives you a break from typing and rests your wrists somewhat, not much, because sometimes you are correcting most of the report.

The only disadvantage I see is they still won't put the horrible dictators on speech recognition because if we can't understand them, the computer sure can't understand them.

One thing I found hilarious the doctor had dictated a lady was hit by a Ford F-150 (which I don't know why he dictated to start with) and the computer typed she was hit by a Port-A-Cath, so this is what I am talking about.


Some people I have heard talk do not like speech recognition at all. They would rather type. I think though you need to be diversified in this field so you make yourself more marketable to companies. So we are here to stay in some form or capacity and I think I can work as long or longer than I want (until retirement age).