[Colorado-Talk] This piece of history from our PHD project in 1953 fearutes our own Diane McGeorge

[Peggy Chong]

Hi:

 

Julie Hunter just finished putting  up  the latest batch of translated
materials.  She found this article about medical transcribers I think you
will like. The Diane Brown is our own Diane McGeorge.

 

Peggy Chong

[Newspaper article:  Denver Post Oct. 19, 1953 is written in the margin.]

 

SIGHTLESS STENOGRAPHERS DO JOB 'BLIND CAN'T DO'

By ROBERT BYERS.

Denver Post Staff Writer

 

              The blind do a full day's work, get paid a full day's wages
and make their own way without extra help in a world of sighted persons at
Colorado General hospital's medical records library.

              What started out as a pilot demonstration on the wide variety
of jobs which blind persons can hold down despite their handicap has turned
into profitable day-to-day experience whereby the library gets its work done
efficiently, correctly and swiftly.

              Right now, three blind persons, are working as stenographers
in the library, transcribing from dictaphones medical history summaries,
surgery reports and letters for Colorado General doctors. A fourth. John
Friel of 3339 Race street, is in training.

              It's the kind of work most persons would say "the blind just
can't do.''

The library is an integral part of Colorado General operation. Everything
that happens to a patient must be recorded and filed for future use. Doctors
use literally thousands of dictaphone cylinders a year, recording procedures
and treatments and results.

RECORDS TRANSCRIBED.

              Ruby Williamson, director of the library, decided last winter
that transcription of these records is work the blind-with proper
training-could do. Even sighted stenographers need special training for the
job to acquaint themselves with the medical "language" used.

              Miss Williamson contacted Claude Tynar of the Colorado
Industries for the Blind, Inc., who referred to her three blind persons he
believed suited for the job. They were Mrs. Diane Brown, 21, of 525
Washington street; Keith Black, 25, of 945 Pennsylvania street, and Mildred
Snow, 22, of 801 Logan street, all totally blind, but all with the ability
to use a typewriter.

              The three began their "medical jargon" course in January,
learning prefixes, suffixes and word roots so as to enable them to recognize
words used by the doctors in their reports. They mastered such jaw breakers
as thromboangitis obliterans, a form of gangrene, and learned to distinguish
between "ilium," meaning of the bone, and' "ileum," meaning of the
intestines, both pronounced exactly the same. 

              Main disadvantage faced by the blind. Miss, Williamson said,
was that they couldn't use the standard 1,700-page Dorlands medical
dictionary like sighted persons. What they learned had to stick in their
minds. Each did make about 1,200 Braille cards for most often used words and
roots, and then thoroughly mastered the meaning of syllables used in
combinations, such as in synarthrosis-syn- meaning together, and arthro-
meaning joint, or an immovable joint.

              Since mid-May, the three have been doing their work side by
side with sighted stenographers and are more than holding their own. 

              "We show them no favors and expect the same work from them as
we do from persons who can see," Miss Williamson said. That may sound a
little testy at first brush, but according to Black- a native of Boise,
Idaho, who worked his way through the University of Oregon despite his
blindness--"that's just the way we want it."

              "We don't want 'busy work' like they give school children to
keep them out of trouble" he said.  "We want a purposeful job and the
opportunity to work and live in society without special considerations."

              We  like they give school children to keep them out of
trouble," he said. "We want a purposeful job and the opportunity to work and
live in society without special considerations."

 

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