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

[Melissa R. Green]

I love this history. I can remember typing, and using a dictaphone. In fact, Haddley school had a medical transcription course in 1994. 




Have a wonderful and blessed day.
  Warmlya  
Melissa R. Green and Pj
A home is nothing without the people you love inside of it.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Peggy Chong via Colorado-Talk  <colorado-talk at nfbnet.org>
To: his'NFB of Colorado Discussion List'"  <colorado-talk at nfbnet.org>
Date: 06/03/2021 11:26 am
Subject: [Colorado-Talk] This piece of history from our PHD project in 1953 fearutes our own Diane McGeorge

>
>
> 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 d.''
> 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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