Medical Transcription Certification For A Better Paying Job by Mary Ruff-King Medical transcription certification is not requisite; however, it certainly may lead to a better paying job. The reason behind this is simple: A medical transcriptionist, or MT, must undergo rigorous examination in order to become a certified medical transcriptionist, or CMT. This gives a CMT an advantage over an MT

when interviewing and definitely gives the certified medical transcriptionist leverage when negotiating the acceptable salary for any medical transcription job when one is offered.A medical transcriptionist must invest two things, time and money, in order to pass this examination which is overseen by the Association of Medical Transcriptionists, the professional organization to which every medical transcriptionist should belong. The medical transcription certification testing is given in two separate parts.

The first part is a multiple-choice written examination in which the medical transcriptionist demonstrates his or her knowledge of various medical-related topics such as medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, disease processes, medical records, ethics, and English language usage. There are a total of 120 questions in six different categories, and each category is weighted differently.

The MT is allowed three hours to complete this portion of the test and must pass it before being allowed to take the second part. The examination fee for this test is $150 as of this writing.The second part of the medical transcription certification test consists of a hands-on medical transcription examination. A medical transcriptionist must demonstrate his or her ability to transcribe dictation of doctors whose voices he or she has never heard before and put that dictation into properly formatted reports,