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We’d like to congratulate Cathy Branton, a recent graduate of our Medical Transcription/Healthcare Documentation program!
Cathy completed the Medical Transcription program and immediately went job hunting. Shortly after graduating she found employment with NTS and is now happily exceeding in her new career.
Below you can read an excerpt of Cathy’s interview and graduate story with one of our Medical Transcription instructors, Caitlin Bourbonnais. If you’re interested in listening to Cathy’s entire graduate story, you’ll find the video in its entirety at the end.
A big thanks to Cathy for sharing her graduate story with future students and with us!
Welcome everyone to our presentation. I’m Caitlin Bourbonnais from the academic department and I’m very happy to have our guest speaker today, Cathy Branton, who is 2022 honors graduate with me here today. Hi Cathy!
Hi Caitlin. Thank you for the introduction and welcome to everybody today. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on what part of the country you’re in, and I just wanted to say it’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to chat to you today about my CanScribe experience.
I’m a little bit nervous. I’m not a public speaker, and in most cases, I would definitely shy away from any form of speaking in front of a group, but I also know the incredible importance of sharing thoughts and feelings with others, so that’s why I am here today.
Since graduating I have listened to a lot of the webinars that have been posted on the CanScribe YouTube page, and whenever I finished a webinar, I always came away with a new piece of information, or more than 1, and today I hope that the same thing happens for you.
So, my name is Cathy Branton, as Caitlin said. I am 58 years old, and I graduated from CanScribe about 6 weeks ago in February. I wanted to share just a little quick history of my background and how I arrived at the decision to take the CanScribe program.
As shown on the slide, the different roles that I have had throughout the past 35 years or so have been varied. They are actually in chronological order, and on reflection, when I was putting the webinar together, I realized that most of the roles that I have chosen have arisen due to family or personal circumstances or the necessity to try to make the best choices to accommodate each situation in life, while at the same time gravitating to careers of my interest.
My choice to take the CanScribe program has followed the same path. I love the quote on this slide, “we can’t control the wind, but we can adjust our sails,” and I’m sure everyone feels that same way in their life. It reminds me of the constant adjusting that we must do in life to manage the things that come our way. Ultimately, it was the continued adjusting to a new situation that led me to the decision to begin the CanScribe program.
In 2020, I was still working as a PSW, and I had been working at this profession for 13 years, and I thought that this would be my final career. However, in January of 2020, I slipped and fell down a set of stairs and my arm flew back to brace my fall, and I injured the acromioclavicular joint on the top of my shoulder. I tried to continue to work as a PSW, but I began to develop adhesive capsulitis, which is also known as a frozen shoulder, so soon my arm just hung at my side with minimal movement, and at that point I knew that my career as a PSW was over.
So, then I began searching for a career that required no lifting but still had a healthcare aspect to it, and I had remembered years before of hearing of someone that did medical transcription as a career, and I had no idea what a medical transcriptionist did, but I did remember at that time being very intrigued. That lingering curiosity from years before led me to investigate the field of transcription and ultimately joined CanScribe.
I chose CanScribe because right from the beginning I found any contact I had with the school to be timely and professional, I found the tuition to be reasonable, and CanScribe was the only school in Canada to have their program approved by the Association for Healthcare Documentation and Integrity.
I began the program last year in 2021 while still trying to figure out how I would ever achieve resolution with my arm. For me, the program became more than a new career, but it also became my support system while being in a very uncertain time in my life. Being immersed in the information and the learning filled my mind with new ideas and thoughts and kept me distracted from my constant thoughts about my future.
Soon I felt part of the CanScribe family. My daily calls with endless questions were always met with such patience and an exchange of a laugh or two and encouragement. The instructors had a wealth of information, and I could tell that they cared about everyone’s success. I love the organization of the program and nothing gave me more satisfaction than putting a checkmark beside each completed chapter.
At times I was frustrated with the learning curves and even questioned continuing, but I knew I was being filled with so much knowledge, and with this new knowledge, a little flicker of pride and confidence started to grow within myself, and as I continued through the program, that little flicker grew into a warm fire of pride and I had no doubt that everyone who is past or present CanScribe students will understand this feeling that you get with your achievements.
After I completed the program, always in hindsight you have thoughts, I reflected on things that I might have done differently or put more consideration into. When I started the program, I was having trouble trying to embrace my own learning style. I was always thinking about ‘well I wonder what everybody else is doing’ or did they buy the book or are they just using the Book of Style online. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about what everybody else was doing instead of trying to focus on how my learning style is.
Once I embraced my own learning style, it became easier and my routine became easier, but my learning style is all about paper and pens and sticky notes and tabs, and recently I heard a young comedian poking fun of the slightly older generation, which I fit into, and the comedian said “you don’t have to print the Internet you know,” and that made me howl.
If you want to continue learning about Cathy’s graduate story, check out the full video interview!
If you’re interested in becoming a Medical Transcriptionist, a Virtual Assistant, a Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialist, or any of the other career courses we offer check out our website or give us a call at 1-800-466-1535.
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