How many words per minute dictation

Whether you type or dictate patient notes, it is ultimately a matter of minutes. There are 24 hours in a day, and the average primary care physician spends 1. Doctors interested in a healthy work-life balance need to use their EMR as efficiently and accurately as possible. So which is faster — typing or dictation? Just as importantly, which is more accurate? Here is a summary of the numbers based on existing research and estimates.

Long answer: Dictation speeds vary depending on the type of dictation. Many physicians who dictate use a third-party transcription service, which receives a recording of the dictated note. The recording is then transcribed by a computer and edited by a professional transcriptionist. Another option is fully automated and immediate transcription using speech-recognition software. Speech recognition software can easily transcribe over words per minute WPM , while the average doctor types around 30 WPM.

Professional transcriptionists editing a dictation type around WPM, an average that is also much faster than physicians. Stanford researchers studying typing versus dictation found that speech recognition was nearly three times faster while also producing fewer errors. We did the math using conservative estimates and found that the average US physician could reduce documentation time by about seven hours per week by switching from typing to dictation.

The bottom line is that you speak much faster than you type. As with typing, getting a dictation perfect the first time requires speaking skills that you develop over time. However, a small amount of effort to refine a new dictation workflow will literally eliminate days of typing over the course of a year.

Short answer: It depends on your workflow, but dictation can be as accurate as a carefully typed clinical note. Long answer: Accuracy of the clinical note is a major concern of every physician.

Many providers still send dictations to third-party transcription services where notes are edited and reviewed by a professional transcriptionist off-site. Unfortunately, researchers have found high average error rates using this back-end transcription. Dictation occurs when people speak and their discourse is transcribed. The person speaking the words is dictating; while another person listens and transcribes them or the words are recorded on a machine for transcription later.

The rate at which the person transcribes the words is known as dictation speed. Dictation speed is the number of words transcribed per minute. Dictation is used for many reasons, but most commonly in the courtroom setting or medical offices. Many courtroom jobs require workers with a relatively high speed of transcribing dictated words.

Court stenographers use a specialized system to enable them to quickly take dictation during court proceedings. Doctors often dictate notes about their patients onto a recording device which are then transcribed into patients written files. Other jobs that use dictation are clerk-typists, clerk-stenographer, data transcriber and office automation clerks.

According to the U. Office of Personnel Management, a requirement of a clerk or stenographer is the ability to transcribe dictated words at a rate of between 80 and words per minute. Dictation can be performed live or is recorded on a machine.