Common homophones bloopers made by Medical Transcriptionist

“Homophones bloopers? What is that?” This is our reaction when we speak of these two terms. To make things easier, let us break them one by one. Homophones are words that are pronounced the same, however, their meanings are different. These words may also differ in their spelling as well. On the other hand, blooper means a funny amusing mistake made by any person or an embarrassing error. In medical transcription often the doctors come across hilarious bloopers from a medical transcriptionist. Transcription errors creep in because the dictations are not clear or too many medical terms are stuffed in the audio files.

Due to these reasons, many misunderstandings happen at the medical transcriptionist’s end. A medical transcriptionist will vary in his skill and experience and may not be so well acquainted with medical terms when compared to another one. Here we have compiled a list of common and homophones bloopers made by a medical transcriptionist that are downright funny!

Ø  ‘History of sick as hell disease’ – sickle cell

Ø  ‘She was a bitch and grinned’ –a bit chagrined

Ø  ‘Patient was discharged with Homo Two’ –Home O2, which means oxygen

Ø  ‘The psycho team was consulted’ – psych OT, means occupational therapy

Ø  ‘Abnormal lover function was indicated in the lab test’ – Liver function

Ø  ‘The eye & nose are within normal limits’ – I & O

Ø  ‘The patient took their meds for beaver’ – forever

Ø  ‘Old occasional male of 49-year-old' – Caucasian male

Ø  ‘Respectablepancreatic cancer’ – Resectable

Ø  ‘Patient is alert, sedated on Propofol’ – alert & oriented, as well as sedated?

Often doctors use the Latin term ‘in extremis’ to indicate ‘at the point of death’. Due to the fact this term does not fall under the conventional medical terminology, a medical transcriptionist might not be aware of the same. If you are a medical transcriptionist make sure you are not transcribing ‘when brought to the ICU, the patient was found to be in extremis’ as ‘ when brought to the ICU, the patient was found to be an extremist.’

Transcriptionists often end up making numeric mistakes as well and they turn out to be deadly. While transcribing make sure these are typed correctly. A study once said that a woman died because of 30 time’s higher dose of medicine that made her blood thinner. Not funny at all!

You need to be careful with similar-sounding words, for example, hypotension and hypertension, dysphagia and dysphasia and many more. Moreover, you need to be equally cautious not to mix up homophones i.e. same words with different spelling and meaning. Examples of these words include ileum & ilium, pleural & plural, etc. Not only are these mistakes silly but errors like these will be completely changing the meaning of the report and will be affecting patient diagnosis. Yes, we do agree that the heavily accented doctors will be making your transcription job difficult, but if you are having any doubts it’s advised to consult the doctors about the same or leave the fields as blank.