Back in January I hosted newly minted medical coder Revka Stearns. For someone so new to the industry, Revka has made a big impact by the act of sharing--documenting her journey in detailed and open fashion on LinkedIn and Facebook, and a half dozen podcasts and programs.

At the time she was on the show Revka had literally been on her first job for about 3 weeks. Eight months later I asked her to come back for an update and share her successes, challenges, and unexpected side-ventures.

Revka has many strengths—smart, hardworking, diligent--but one of them is effective use of social media, creating a model for how I like to see these platforms used (and unfortunately often aren’t).

But she’s also had her share of struggles. Coding is hard.

This was a bit of a longer interview so I split it into two parts. On part 1 we cover: