If you are a new medical transcriptionist, it won’t be long before someone screams in your ears. I don’t mean that literally. I mean it won’t be long before you’re listening to a tape or a digital recording and someone in the background screams or some other awful noise accosts your ears.

Doctors are notorious for flipping x-rays around while dictating which can jar your ears. Also, a sudden ringing of the telephone or even the flushing of a toilet(!) can cause you to suddenly yank off that headset. I think most medical transcriptionsts agree that we have all suffered from aural fatigue at one time or another by having to transcribe dictation accompanied by noisy backgrounds and various sounds, as referenced here.

Medical transcriptionists can protect their ears to some degree by placing the earbuds of the headset over the tragus (plural form: tragi) of each ear and turning up the volume, if required. When working in an office environment, this is the best solution to this problem.

Those medical transcriptionists who work at home have the luxury of not wearing headsets at all and can turn up the volume without fear of disrupting anyone else, save their family and/or pets.

Report the noisy dictation to your supervisor and play the tape/digital recording for him/her. The doctor can be apprised of it too, either directly by you or by your supervisor (depending upon your situation). Sometimes that will help, at least for awhile.

Also, I have gone one step further and purchased a custom set of earplugs that I wear when I am in a movie theater or a noisy place, such as a mall. I was able to obtain these at a local gun show, and they have served me very well in my effort to protect my hearing when I am not transcribing.