Medical Scribe

 

Statue of a scribe. Saqqara, Egypt. Antiquities Service Excavations 1893. c. 2500 BC.

I know a couple of people who are lawyers. They don't write, and they don't type. If they need a letter written, they dictate it and someone else turns their words into print. When I started having to write things, that is prose instead of code, at work, I thought it would be nice if we had a typing service to help out. Hunting and pecking is okay if you are writing code, I mean half of what you write isn't even letters or numbers, and every character is critical. Writing English prose is a little more forgiving, and some people have made it their business to know how to type, so if you are producing a lot of written material, it would make sense to have a typist. But my ignorant employers didn't see it that way, so I sort of had to teach myself.
    Went to the doctor this morning for an annual checkup and he had a scribe with him. This was something new. Previously he had always operated the computer himself. Now he has a medical student doing it for him. Kind of nice. He spent all his time paying attention to me instead of trying to decipher the cryptic computer display.

From The Medical Scribe Journal:

Nationally, the average salary for a Emergency Medicine doctor is about $250,000  per year, versus $87,000 for nurse practitioners, and $79,634 for physician assistants.

Medical scribes make $20-$23 per hour, which is roughly half what a nurse practitioner makes.