Virtual Ignorance?

YES! Right on! I totally agree

I once registered in a forum (european) using a name that is a rather common 'nickname' in Sweden meaning nothing - just a name.
Then I started to get very rare comments and PM's at this forum...
I descovered that my name meant somthing let's say 'REALLY ADULT'... If you where from Holland...

Yup, had an incident at work recently where our email filter blocked an email because it containted the word "Kike", in the case of the email it was someone's name but the word has other meanings.

Hehe. It occured to me that, if someone used the word "Shag" for a name not many years ago, people of some english-speaking countries would have assumed that it intentionally meant "f.ck", but the U.S. people wouldn't have known that. To them it would have been a bird, carpet-related, or even tobacco, but they wouldn't have understood it as anything sexual. A U.S. person using that name could easily have been wrongly thought of as being vulgar. Until the BBC thread, I'd only thought of "Candida" as being quite a nice name and could easily have used it myself, and some people would have assumed that I meant it as the disease.

Doctors spend 10 years in medical school, I believe? Anyhow, medical transcribers get paid a lot, but still hardly enough when medical documents ARE legal documents and medical transcribers spend half of their day being doctor such as correcting words or even correcting prescription orders. I remember one time a doctor ordered 5000 units of insulin. 5000 units is enough for an elephant and would kill a human being. I typed in the standard dose of 500, covered his arse big time and got no compensation whatsoever! Oh and then there was this one doctor from East India with a very thick accent and permanent laryngitis. He spoke so softly he had almost no voice at all. His reports came back to him as mostly fill in the blanks. Such as The patient ________________________ was _________________________________ in ___________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________ and ___________________________________________________________

It was such as pleasure working with American doctors. Those were the good days. Glad that person didn't get 5000 units of insulin! Not to mention so many others including prescriptions as some names of medicine can sound the same when spoken, so a medical transcriber can figure out what medicine the doctor means by checking the symptoms. So one can conclude what someone means in rl by using the most logical assumptions of what they meant by using the rest of the context. I do believe that process is called "concluding" not assuming.

It is a commonly accepted theory that "face to face" rl communication is made up in the following approximate proportions:

10% - the actual words spoken
25% - the "tone" of the words
65% - non-verbal cues

I would suggest that in forums the importance of each element is inverted:

10% - non-verbal cues (speed of typing, profile information etc . . . )
25% - the "tone" of the words (smilies, spelling, grammar, punctuation etc . . . )
65% - the actual words typed (including the coherence of their presentation in making an argument)

I don't intend to justify this observation, but offer it in the hope that perhaps dumb posters might in future understand why their questions, opinions andcomments are not given the weight that perhaps they feel they deserve.

Pep (Somehow I doubt it, though; which is the reason not many smart individuals sustain their interest in these forums)

Did you know that people from the English town of Scunthorpe have been blocked from using email for the last twenty years?

Pep (One forum I was on converted Dick Cockburn's posting so that they appeared to emanate from Richard Richardburn)

You are entitled to your opinion; you have every right to be wrong. Perhaps you would like to explain what you believe *is* the reason for poor spelling? Perhaps you might attempt to throw in a justification too, given the existence of rl education and dictionaries, and online dictionaries and spelling checkers.

To avoid ad hominem charges I was being subtle, and will only say that if the cap fits, wear it.

Pep (Considering attempting to dumb down his posts so cap-wearers understand them)

There's a wine that suffers from the same thing - so I'm told.

Make that 15% for "non-verbal cues (speed of typing, profile information etc . . . )" and include mathematics

Just to say you would be prosecuted for changing prescriptions without authority in England.

Pep (So you were an audio/copy typist! The acme of intelligentsia!)

Hahahaha - Thanks Phil. I have amended it.

I used to be an accountant, but I am better now!

Pep (Accountants are better at taking away than adding up . . .)

No. A doctor has to read the finished typed report before signing it. A doctor sometimes crosses out words and makes corrections, and then the revised report is sent to the doctor to read over again before signing. If any meds or dosages are wrong and need correcting it is up to the doctor to correct before signing. All medical reports need to be signed by the doctor before submitted as a medical report on the patient in their legal medical chart.

Before I make an assumption, how does that justify *your* correction of a dose, and how did you "save his arse big time" if he was going to read it before signing anyway? And how does it make you *not* an audio/copy typist, which is what your post was about?

Phil (you weren't adopted, were you?)

I'm not wearing any dumb downed cap for you Pserendipity Daniels. Who the hell do you think you are?

People with learning disabilities have trouble spelling for one. And I know of one man who started a business from his garage spells like a 5th grader but now makes over 200k a year from his business.

But again, who the hell do you think you are?

And actually, that's 400k (almost half a million a year) including his wife. So his wife and him make about a half a million a year but he cannot spell and spells like a child. This did not deter him from his intelligence.

So your "expertise" is being made redundant by voice recognition software then?

Pep (You are Eliza and I claim my $5!)

I'm the guy asking you what *your* excuse is for poor spelling.

Pep (Add in poor grammar and execrable argument presentation if you like)

PS Add in the inability to read accurately, if you like; I have made no reference to "intelligence" at all.

Yeah right, I say sarcastically.

No answer then?

Pep (Not even an excuse if you can't think up a reason?)

I saved his arse by saving him a lot of time and not hurting his ego by looking pretty foolish to the medical community around him. Even if a doctor signed a report to give the patient 5000 units of insulin by an oversight on the doctors part, a nurse or pharmacist would have caught it also and I highly doubt any human being would be given 5000 units of insulin even though that's what the doctor said or ordered which ever wording you prefer.

And I'd like to add, I was giving an example of concluding within context.

What's the difference between God and a doctor?

Pep (God doesn't believe he's a doctor)

Hm. Where I trained to do medical transcription, we were told in instances like this to type what the doctor dictated and flag it for correction, because WE were not doctors.

However...I'm not surprised.

That would be "he and his wife make...."

And since when is fiscal success an indicator of intelligence?

That's an answer to one of the questions. I guess you don't have answers to the others - right?

The way you wrote about it (" covered his arse big time and got no compensation whatsoever!", it sounded as though you'd saved him from the repercussions if the patient had actually received the 5000 dose, but it seems you just saved a bit of time and saved his ego a bit. You do have a self-inflating way with words, don't you?

Btw, why would you think you deserved compensation? (I'm assuming you meant a reward, as compensation is for something you lost, and you didn't lose anything.) It doesn't really matter why you think you deserved a reward though - just thought I'd mention it.

Yes that is way most medical reports are done. If it's totally impossible to understand what the doctor is saying, we leave a blank to be filled in.

However, typing 5000 units of insulin is pretty ridiculous if one is a seasoned transcribers. For newbies, just type what you hear and leave the corrections to the doctors because a newbie might think 5000 units is the standard dose while a seasoned transcriber knows otherwise.

Also there are meds that sound similar, with the exception that one starts with an S and the other an F. If a patient has in their whole medical history report that they are being treated for an allergy, it's a logical conclusion than that the doctor meant the medication that starts with F as that IS THE ONE THAT TREATS ALLERGIES, as the one that starts with S has nothing to do with any of the patients symptoms. One earns a reputation and can get paid more if medical reports save a doctor time by not leaving a blank or having to change. There are definite instances where one can put in the most logical medicine in accordance with the patients symptoms. However, newbie transcribers may not know one med from the other. It depends on one's level of experience over the years.

On the basis of the examples of your typing in the forums, I would like to know who corrected all *your* errors?

Pep (Big fleas have little fleas . . . )

PS It seems remote behavioural modification *does* work; my influence seems to have caused Avawyn to review her text albeit after she posted, and for her to make corrections! Perhaps there is some hope . . .