MY Girls

The Radiology Typing Pool

Canva AI’s rendition of the Radiology Typing Pool, created at my direction.

Circa 1976–1978. Those long-ago years remain so vivid in my memory that I feel compelled to share this story of our little hospital office.

Typing Pool: Before the advent of personal computers and digital dictation, large organizations relied on typing pools for all of their document creation. Typists would listen to audio recordings and type them up into reports. Centralizing the typing duties allowed companies to process high volumes of paperwork quickly.

It was Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester that propelled me into a medical terminology love affair that is still alive 50 years later. Specifically, the Radiology Typing Pool, comprised of six of the fastest, most accurate typists you will ever meet!

At a sweetly tender age of 19 years, I somehow talked my way into a position on this team of quirky ladies with lightning-fast fingers and nerves of steel. I immediately fell deeply in love with these five “older” women who would quickly teach me the necessary tricks to maintain my position in our dank, dark, hospital basement office.

Norma was my supervisor. Bossy, red-haired lady, she was. She drove me nuts with her horrible habit of calling everything hers. MY this and MY that. She referred to the console holding all the dictation we were to type as MY…