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Medical terminology is a specialized language for medical professionals to describe the objects and situations frequently encountered in their fields, such as the words and phrases which can precisely describe diseases, illnesses, medical conditions, treatment procedures, and diagnoses. Medical terminology can be broken down into roots, prefixes, suffixes, and sometimes combining vowels.
Medical terminology is an essential part of the healthcare industry. It is widely used by medical and healthcare professionals in almost all aspects of medical, clinical, and healthcare facilities. Serving as a coding language of medicine, medical terms can efficiently help doctors, nurses, pharmacists, medical assistants, and even billing specialists understand what’s happening or what should be done to assist the patients.
Medical terminologies are built from 4 standardized word parts: prefix, word root, suffix, and combining vowel.
By breaking down a medical term into its word part, many readers can literally understand the meaning and purpose of the medical term.
Like the terms in other professions, medical terminologies are also constantly evolving. Medical professionals can use reputable medical terminology reference resources to identify how some new medical terms are created, fully understand the purpose of building the medical vocabulary and even start to apply the term in the context of a sentence.
A prefix is defined as an affix that is placed at the beginning of a medical terminology to modify its basic meaning or indicate some additional information.
For example, in some cases, a prefix is added before the word root to indicate a location, number, year, type, or quality.
As the core part, the word root indicates the most essential meaning of the medical term. It gives a medical term its primary meaning and purpose. The root of a medical term is usually a body part.
Almost all medical terms have a least one root. When the prefix is absent, the root can appear at the beginning of a term.
The suffix is an affix that is added at the ending part of a term, word, or word base to modify the basic meaning of the root or to indicate some additional information, such as medical specialty, testing, function, condition, procedure, or disorder.
Sometimes it’s added to simply define whether a term is a noun, verb, or adjective.
A combining vowel is added to combine two or multiple word roots to form a compound word or added between two word parts to simply help in the pronunciation of the whole word, such as – cyst/o – therm/o.
Combining vowels can be a few letters: “a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u” and “y”. However, it’s usually the letter “o” in medical terms.
The medical term pericardium consists of the following 3 word parts:
peri/cardi/um
Prefix: peri-, means “surrounding”
Root: cardi, means the body part of “heart”
Suffix: -um, means “structure”
If we put all the meanings of each part together, the term pericardium can be translated into “a structure surrounding the heart”
The medical term cardiology is built from the following 3 word parts:
cardi/o/logy
Root: cardi-, means the body part of “heart”, placed at the beginning of the term
Combining vowel: letter “o”
Suffix: -logy, means “study”
On the whole, the term cardiology means “the study of the heart”
A standardized medical terminology system can facilitate communications between 2 or more hospitals, clinics, healthcare providers, and healthcare systems.
The use of standardized medical terminology can also improve efficiency and consistency in terms of health information, clinical research, and data management, as well as case studies.
Medical terminology is widely used every day, in every healthcare setting, by almost all medical and healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, billing and coding specialists, and even insurance specialists in processing claims. It can precisely describe diseases, illnesses, medical conditions, symptoms and diagnoses.
As a standardized language of medicine, medical terminology enables medical professionals to speak the same language. That means all members of the healthcare team can understand and communicate with each other clearly and effectively, significantly reducing the number of mistakes and misunderstandings in healthcare settings.
A competent understanding of medical terminology is vital if you are interested in working in the medical and health field. However, it takes a lot of practice and effort to expand your medical vocabulary and master the language of medicine eventually.
Below is a list of useful resources and tools for you to study medical terminology efficiently:
University of San Diego Medical Terminology Online Course
Boston University Medical Terminology Online Course
Colorado Community Colleges Online Course on: HPR1045 – Advanced Medical Terminology
CMA (AAMA) Certification Exam: Medical Terminology
