Experience helps

Occasionally with work I will run into a dictation with issues.  Issues that make it difficult to hear what I need to hear.  There are times when the doctor yawns while speaking, listens to music that occasionally is too loud to just be background noise, has someone speaking in the background, tries to talk over the phone ringing or fire alarm (I hate that one!) or even dictating while eating (which is always fun to listen too GACK!).  But mostly we have mumblers.  Either they are at the end of a super long shift and are exhausted, they forget to speak clearly, or they are just naturally mumblers.

One doctor in particular seems to try to race through their dictations, but yet is usually speaking clearly - as long as you can separate the words that merge together with the speed.  Sometimes this is as easy as slowly the playback down.

But occasionally, they get in more of a rush, are tired, have a million things to do, or whatever.  The other day was one of those days for a particularly speed-racer doctor and I found myself listening to:

There are no intraluminal filling defects seen within the pulmavaschaturasagest pulmonary embolus.

Because of experience with this doctor I was actually able to hear:

There are no intraluminal filling defects seen within the pulmonary vasculature to suggest pulmonary embolus.

I was so glad that they like standard statements and that I know them without even having to think about it.  When I slowed the playback down a little bit more, it was a bit more clear, which made me more confident that I actually knew what was being said and I didn't happen to be completely winging it.  It feels good to gain just a teensy bit of confidence, especially since I was having a particularly hard day.

Note: I wrote the sentence down WHILE listening to it to try to capture the nuance of the doctors slurring of 4 words into 1. It still doesn't give it justice.