Melanie and John,
I have some experience with Dragon as well, but I found it to be rather frustrating to use long-term. Successful users seem to report recurring themes, like the need for a good mike, a decent training period, and the need to enunciate clearly without a lot of extra vocalizations. Even so, I found the time spent making corrections (both to the final document and to my voice file) to be significant. Add to that the frustration of words that just couldn't be "learned" by the program, as well as technical glitches (e.g. with the program and mike turning on and off-among others) and I finally gave up on it.
Having the program dictate a few paragraphs on a cue as you demonstrate above is one of the most satisfying things with Dragon. On the other hand, you can accomplish the same thing with Shortkeys, or other text shortcut programs. With that program, I can type "lac extrem exam" and get the exact same text printed as when you say your cue; and I would suggest I can do so just as quickly, and a bit more reliably.
What is much more challenging for voice dictation is a few paragraphs of "free text". That is also where the program can provide a lot more benefit; it takes a lot of time to type a long hpi that can't easily be "templated". It is also where the program tends to make a lot of errors.
So...that is why I asked for some examples of dictation "without corrections". I think it would be valuable to see an unvarnished version of what Dragon produces when you dictate a few paragraphs of medical text. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade; if it works for you, that is great. Can you show it to us in action, please?
