Hi, all! This website is so helpful! I am a brand new Andrews grad. I got IT a few weeks ago, but as I've posted elsewhere, so far it slows me down. I started out using the standard IT method of the first letter for a word and the first letter of each word in a phrase. I then switched to the ABCZ method, and that helped because it meant far fewer advisories for a given word or phrase, but it's kind of a pain to have a minimum of 4 letters in a short for a 5-letter word.

My question overall is this. If you were beginning to build your expansion system anew and could pick any one consistent system, what would you choose? This is what I've gleaned from this website and my own very minimal experience:

1. It's a good idea to choose one system and only one (though I'm sure there will be exceptions eventually) so that one always knows what the exansion will be.
2. The shorts should be long enough to limit the advisories/duplicates to a few but short enough to be efficient.

Here are the methods that I am considering along with the pros and cons I've found. I hope this helps others who are trying to figure this out:

1. The method IT comes set up with. This involves the first letter of each word and the first letter of each word in a phrase.
Pros: Very simple and easy to remember.
Cons: It creates tons of duplicates, so you spend a lot of time looking at advisories, which definitely slows me down a lot.

2. ABCZ. This method uses the first 3 letters and the last letter of each word, the first 2 letters of each word in a 2-word phrase, and the first letter of each word in a phrase that has 3 or more words.
Pros: This minimizes the number of duplicates to a reasonable amount. It too is simple and can be very consistent.
Cons: I don't like having a different method for 2-word phrases, because it seems that a 3rd word could frequently be added otherwise. Also, this method doesn't seem worth it for any word that is less than 5 or 6 letters long, and there is a limit (26) to the number of singles one can use. Also, since all abbreviations for words become phrases in IT, there are some more duplicates since the two categories of words and phrases become melded into one.

3. The "Grow" method. This method uses the first 3 letters of the first word in a phrase, then the first letter in each subsequent word. I don't know what Barb Grow used for single words, but I'd love clarification of that.
Pros: Like the ABCZ method, I would think this would minimize duplicates. It's also very intuitive for me anyway.
Cons: I haven't actually tried this method yet, so I'm not sure, but what do you do with single words and does it work well for short phrases?

4. The Saving Keystrokes method. The author talks about using a variety of methods based on the word or phrase.
Pros: There are lots of good ideas for how to get the most efficient (shortest) shorts without duplication.
Cons: Since a primary goal is to avoid any duplicates, there is a need to use a variety of methods to do that. With IT, duplicates aren't a problem as long as there aren't too many, so it seems to me that one consistent method would be better.

I have seen other methods and ideas, but these are the ones that really stick out. What single consistent method would you use if you were starting again? Right now, while I'm seeking a job, I have the time to become comfortable with IT, but I'm spending a lot of time trying to determine the "perfect" method, so all insights would be helpful. The advisories do slow me down a lot. I don't know if that's permanent or not, but one of my criterion is making it so the short has no more than 2 duplicates most of the time. Thanks, everybody!

You will have to find what works for your brain. I went through trials of several different methods. After two years, I have settled on the following method of abbreviation:
The patient has = tphs (first three and last letter)
one and two words are in the words directory (even three if needed, but also repeated in the phrases side.
numbers are o=z, one=o, two=tw, three=th, etc. No numbers in the shorts.
z and first two letter plus number is the template for the Doctor,last name, and number.
x and command is where I have my commands stored. (ie. xies = takes out s and adds ies)

I use one big glossary and add includes for the compilations as I run them (Two for each set of documents, with different settings).

I am sure you will find what works for your brain. As to single words, I love being able to hit the first three or four letters of the word and then the last one or two to narrow down the list to the one you want, especially those nice long terms that we get so often.

Also, I use 10 lines in the adviseries and have seen an increase from 40 to about 300 lines per hour on good days. I work for acute care with hundreds of different dictators and specialties. They are all teaching hospitals, as well. The reports could be of any type, except no radiology.

Good luck and have fun experimenting with the program. I love it. I have found the help from the IT Team is tremendous, as well.

Thank you so much for the help. It makes sense to just find out what works for your brain, as you said. I tend to be a very auditory learner, which may explain why all the advisories are slowing me down. I'll keep at it though and would love to hear more insights from all of you.

Cabert wrote:



In the ABCZ method I didn't envision using a 4-letter abbreviation for a 5-letter word. The rule for this is to use abcz for single words when the word has 6 or more letters. "In the spirit of the main rule", I use abz for 5 letter words and az for 4 letter words. This gives shorts for some 4 and 5 letter words but of course not all.

In IT, you can also use the MedSingles for words of any length and enter them with 2 or 3 keystrokes. E.g. was, the, and, etc. can be typed this way. This helps with quite a few additional short words if one wants to use this feature (MedSingles).

Also, in addition, in the TAMED2 glossary set, there are many common English words and phrases (subjects and verbs for example) and many common med terms or expressions so one can enter short words in phrases with 2 or 3 keystrokes.

Other than that, I do end up typing out many words of 3, 4 and 5 letters. Also I generally type out "and" for example rather than use "a" in MedSingles. It's a matter of preference of course.

Jon

Sorry for the belated reply, Jon. Thank you for the clarification. After reading your post, I went to your website and learned more about the details of your system. Right now, I'm very happy using ABCZ for single words as well as 3-word phrases and up, but I'm still messing around with 2-word phrases. I'm working now, and my main glossary (called ABCZ) has gotten quite large already. As we speak, I put 155 2-word phrases from the glossary in Excel, and I'm playing with different methods to see which ones produce the fewest duplicates. I'll let you all know the results when I have them.

Well, since I started this post, it seems only fair to "report" on what I'm doing now. I started out determined to build the perfect IT set of glossaries for maximum efficiency. The problem was that I was spending a lot of time messing with the glossaries. That was fine until I actually had a job, but now I have better things to do than mess around with IT. In the end, I have temporarily abandoned using ABCZ, and just use what IT came with on the advice of a couple IT tech support people.

So, here's what I'm doing now, and I'm really happy with it on one of the two accounts I work on. To clarify, one of the account has about 100 doctors, and this is working well for that even though that sounds like a lot. The other account has about 2000 doctors, so I almost never get the same doctor twice, so this system doesn't work for that, but here's my method for my 100-doctor account:

1. As soon as I get a doctor I've never transcribed for before, I find samples of the doctor's previous reports. Let's say the doctor's name is Smith. I make a Word file called All Smith, and I put all the samples I find in there.

2. Using IT, I compile those. Right now, if I have less than about 20 pages, I set the minimum word to 1 and the maximum phrase to anywhere between 4 and 7. If I have more than 20 pages of samples, I set the minimum word to 2. I name the glossary after the doctor in a folder called "Doctor Glossaries." I also include my drug glossary and a big glossary for the account temporarily.

3. Now, the glossary isn't really that great for the first few times I use it, but as I go, I add obvious abbreviations, and I always want to make sure to have the headings that the doctor uses.

4. I'm still on QA, so when I get reports back from QA, again, I add obvious things that I missed to the drug or doctor glossary, and I add the QA'd reports into the All Smith file.

5. When I get enough reports or just when I have a minute to do it, I do another compilation based on that doctor's file, and I usually throw in the backup file of the same as well as any separate sample files I have in order to get lots of continuations. Now, I don't want to lose the changes and additions I made to my original Smith glossary, so I call this one Smith2.

6. I never access the Smith2 glossary directly. Instead, I just include it in the Smith glossary and continue to make changes to Smith, not Smith2. When I get a lot more reports, I recompile the All Smith file and save it as Smith2 again. In other words, I only compile the Smith glossary once, but I keep recompiling the Smith2 glossary as I add to the number of reports and samples I have.

I get tremendous continuations with some doctors, and pretty good ones with others. I'm still trying to figure out the best method for my 2000-dictator account, and I'd also be happier knowing that just what I wanted would come up all the time on the same line. That's the downside I guess.

I hope this helps, and I'm open to suggestions.

Cabert