Dave Barry, in his famous "Book of Bad Songs", talks about a friend of his, Al Kooper, who sang a song called "Caress me, Baby."  According to the book's narrative, one of the lines sounded like "gonna railroad high tonight", or, more accurately, "Goan raroo hirenite" (or words to that effect.)  Dave said he asked Al what the words really were, and Al told him he had no idea, that that's what he heard on the original recording, and he just picked words that sounded somewhat like what he was hearing.

I sometimes wish we MTs could do that, but we have to be accurate.  I've heard dictations that made "Goan raroo hirenite" sound like masterful prose delivered by a trained thespian.  I've typed dictations that sounded like 25 minutes of "Goan raroo hirenite," with a few "wonk sterbo geneserets" tossed in just to make it more interesting.  I've also worked my way through ones where the last statement I clearly understood was, "This is Doctor"¦" and from there on out it was "Goan raroo hirenite."

Occasionally these docs who talk as though their teeth have been cemented together get their due.  Back when I was a trainee (back in the age before computers) there was a doc working at my hospital who had the bad habit of dictating through his yawns.  As a result we ended up with lots of statements that sounded like, "The patient was taken to the awwweperrrraatin rooooooom unnn put on the table."  Actually, that was a fairly easy one to decipher, but sometimes he'd get incomprehensible later in the report.  Once he came into our office to use the phone while I was working on one of his reports.  I came to a yawn, and had no idea what he was saying, so I asked him to listen to himself.  He listened, and confessed that he had no idea what he'd said.  "But here's what it should say," he told me, and I typed what he said.  You'd think getting to hear something like that would have cured him, but it didn't.

I have the secret fantasy of making some of these people listen to themselves dictate, and I'm sure I'm not the only MT who feels that way.  I got my wish once - a pediatrician who was one of the worst dictators I've ever heard in many years of doing MT got to listen to himself dictate when he came to the office to complain about the quality of his reports, which I think took a lot of gall on his part.  Well, he was so aghast at how badly he dictated he insisted on redoing the report he'd listened to and straightened right up after that.  He even left me a thank-you note for typing a long complicated summary for him.  What a guy.  I wish we could do that to a few of these providers who think that because they're a doctor everything they say is worthy of being taken down for posterity.  In some cases, it sounds more like ramblings from someone who drank too much coffee before bed. 

Oh, well.  I can dream, can't I?