Too slow to be a scribe, and therefore a doctor

[smallbiz2doc]

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I have cut my pet sitting territory down significantly to make room for a job as a scribe, and now I'm getting cold feet right when I desperately need to replace the income. After reading about how hard it is to keep up (I already tend to be too methodical and slow at things, plus I make more errors/backspacing if someone is watching me type or I'm in a hurry), I don't believe it would be a good fit. Should I just stop hesitating and get a scribe job as planned and see if it cures my slowness, or is there too much risk that I will just fail myserably, putting both my sanity and the workflow of a local ER dept in jeopardy? As for my typing skills, I always test at just barely 50 WPM. I know there are other clinical experience options, but if I don't think I can even handle being a scribe...?

 

[heartsink]

As with anything else, practice makes perfect.

 

[Law2Doc]

I have cut my pet sitting territory down significantly to make room for a job as a scribe, and now I'm getting cold feet right when I desperately need to replace the income. After reading about how hard it is to keep up (I already tend to be too methodical and slow at things, plus I make more errors/backspacing if someone is watching me type or I'm in a hurry), I don't believe it would be a good fit. Should I just stop hesitating and get a scribe job as planned and see if it cures my slowness, or is there too much risk that I will just fail myserably, putting both my sanity and the workflow of a local ER dept in jeopardy? As for my typing skills, I always test at just barely 50 WPM. I know there are other clinical experience options, but if I don't think I can even handle being a scribe...?

Quitting before you even try something and psyching yourself out of even trying are bad habits you need to break before an endeavor like med school. I don't know if the scribe thing Is going to work out for you, but I think you probably need to have a go.

 

[68PGunner]

Quit if you want. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.

 

[Law2Doc]

Quit if you want. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.

Nobody is forcing anybody, but this career is one you spend outside of your comfort zone so the sooner you learn to say "sounds good" to anything and everything, the easier the transition will be.

 

[Ryank327]

I have cut my pet sitting territory down significantly to make room for a job as a scribe, and now I'm getting cold feet right when I desperately need to replace the income. After reading about how hard it is to keep up (I already tend to be too methodical and slow at things, plus I make more errors/backspacing if someone is watching me type or I'm in a hurry), I don't believe it would be a good fit. Should I just stop hesitating and get a scribe job as planned and see if it cures my slowness, or is there too much risk that I will just fail myserably, putting both my sanity and the workflow of a local ER dept in jeopardy? As for my typing skills, I always test at just barely 50 WPM. I know there are other clinical experience options, but if I don't think I can even handle being a scribe...?

From what you're saying and how you are saying it it sounds like you have some anxiety issues you need to work through and build confidence in yourself. You need to force yourself to do things you aren't comfortable doing and not let anxiety get to you while doing it. If you can't do this then you need to look at another profession. Take the scribe job, don't worry about when someone is watching you or how well you are going to do or what someone is thinking of you as you're typing away. Focus on what you are doing and do it to the best of your ability. Trust me, the Docs at the ER aren't just going to leave you in all night screwing up their workflow if you are that bad so don't worry about screwing up the ERs flow.

 

[CW 2010]

You should try before you quit. Even if you decide that the scribe job is not for you, it does not indicate you can't become a doctor.

 

[smallbiz2doc]

From what you're saying and how you are saying it it sounds like you have some anxiety issues you need to work through and build confidence in yourself. You need to force yourself to do things you aren't comfortable doing and not let anxiety get to you while doing it. If you can't do this then you need to look at another profession. Take the scribe job, don't worry about when someone is watching you or how well you are going to do or what someone is thinking of you as you're typing away. Focus on what you are doing and do it to the best of your ability. Trust me, the Docs at the ER aren't just going to leave you in all night screwing up their workflow if you are that bad so don't worry about screwing up the ERs flow.

Thank you, and everyone so far. Yes, the anxiety has been trapping me from so many things. I was expecting if I'm slow I shouldn't do it, but I might just be using my slowness in past situations as an excuse not to put myself out there. I guess I have to risk finding out I can't do it in order to find out I can (I wonder if the self-sabotaging part of me is actually afraid of the latter!).

 

[Quik]

I don't think there is any metric nor any sort of aptitude test that examines the suitability of a doctor based on typing speed. Being thorough and precise, albeit slow, are important traits of a doctor. If you were considering being a court reporter and fail as a scribe, maybe consider another career option. I see little relevance between the two jobs, a physician and a scribe. The latter is only relevant because it provides good experience to witness what a doctor does on a daily basis.

As for the confidence, try and do, but do not give in to your fear of failure.

edit to add, the Ortho I shadow types with index fingers... Painfully slow when pulling up electronic charts or films, but damn good when diagnosing a torn miniscus via the McMurry's sign.

 

[QofQuimica]

Dude, you're talking about typing a freaking note, not performing brain surgery. And if this is in the ED, the histories are typically a paragraph at most, and often just a sentence or two. Even if it's psych or neuro, it's not going to be the length of War and Peace. People with high school educations (or less) are capable of serving as stenographers; do you really think they have special intellectual skills that you lack? You don't even have to learn shorthand!

Seriously, if you can't handle following a doctor into a room and typing a brief note, yeah, I agree w/ the other posters that you need to work on that self-confidence before you even think about doing something that will push you out of your comfort zone as much as medical training will.

 

[Mad Jack]

I have cut my pet sitting territory down significantly to make room for a job as a scribe, and now I'm getting cold feet right when I desperately need to replace the income. After reading about how hard it is to keep up (I already tend to be too methodical and slow at things, plus I make more errors/backspacing if someone is watching me type or I'm in a hurry), I don't believe it would be a good fit. Should I just stop hesitating and get a scribe job as planned and see if it cures my slowness, or is there too much risk that I will just fail myserably, putting both my sanity and the workflow of a local ER dept in jeopardy? As for my typing skills, I always test at just barely 50 WPM. I know there are other clinical experience options, but if I don't think I can even handle being a scribe...?

Your ability to be a scribe in no way correlates to your potential abilities as a physician. As a doctor, you have scribes, residents, and dictation services that will be doing much of the note-taking for you (depending on the hospital). You will also develop your typing skills with time- I started off at a lowly 40 wpm years ago, but now that I type so much so often, I can clock 110 wpm+. It's a skill like any other, not some innate ability. You might want to ditch the scribe job for some other form of clinical experience if it is a poor fit though, as experience that nets you a poor LOR due to poor performance won't help you very much in the long run. Then again, you might just need to give it time- no one starts out good at their job, that comes with experience.

 

[DrMidlife]

Yes, generally if you can't figure out how to be a good scribe as a premed that's not good. Before there's any question of medical competence, scribing is about work ethic and people skills and common sense. Good lord please have those things.

However, those in practice may have forgotten about the learning curve. When you've seen 10 EMR's you might not remember what it was like when you saw the first one with its ICD codes, and its work flow that is entirely baffling until you know about clinical departments and common inputs/outputs. You might not remember what it was like to not know what HCTZ is or what it implies. A premed or M1 can have what looks like a truly ridiculous lack of intelligence that completely disappears after the second lap of renal. Presumably as a premed or M1 it's worrisome to be so ignorant and anxiety is warranted. If the dictating physician is douchey or the training program is crap, scribing could be really awful.

Best of luck to you.

 

[QofQuimica]

You don't need to have any medical knowledge to scribe beyond learning basic medical terminology, similar to what our registration people and floor secretaries do to enter orders. They have no idea what they're writing either. Some of them don't even really speak English. The OP does, so there's one big advantage there.

Everyone in the hospital feels scared when doing something new for the first time, from the premed to the attending. Do you think I'm not scared to be a new attending in two months? It's even scarier than being a new intern was, because now I'm not going to have a senior resident and an attending watching me like a hawk. And everyone struggles to learn to use the EMR. My hospital implemented our EMR while I was a senior resident. We had been using paper charts before that, so the change in work flow was significant. The process was exquisitely painful, for me and for everyone else. We were all slower while we learned how to enter our own orders and fill out the charts. It was stressful and we got behind, had to stay at work longer to get our work done, etc. But no one quit their job over it.