A lot of us may have said goodbye to medical terminology after we completed high school. Nevertheless, it is very important to be familiar with medical terminology, especially for those in the medical field.
Physician examination
Significance
Let's say you work in the medical field and are supposed to tell the patient about take a certain medication prescribed by the doctor. You fail to read the doctor's shorthand writing because you are unable to understand medical terminology. You are definitely risking harm to the patient because she trusts you to understand the meaning of the doctor's writing. So in the medical field, there can be no justification for not knowing medical terminology.
Function
Medical terminology is the basis of communication used by doctors, nurses, health care providers, medical transcriptionists, medical office assistants and medical billers. Medical terminology or simply, medical words, requires special training if you are planning a career in the medical field. There is a basic requirement of medical terminology, even for people involved in billing and insurance claims processing. It is useful for both the people involved in the medical field, as well as to the patient who is curious to know more about medicine.
Identification
Go to the local library or a medical dictionary online and check out various medical terms. One dictionary that can be really helpful in understanding medical terminology is Dorland's Medical Dictionary. Though you may not become an expert, you will be able to understand medical terms and how certain medical words are formed. You will get a hang of most medical terminologies and will be able to understand medical treatment updates and research data better.
Basic terms
Here are some basic terms: 'pan' means 'all,' 'cyto' means 'cells,' 'penia' means 'deficiency,' 'itis' means 'inflammation,' 'leuko' means 'white,' 'lysis' means' break up,' 'mal' means 'bad,' 'hepato' means 'liver,' 'my' means 'muscle' and 'algia' means 'pain.' Now, let's take some of these prefixes and suffixes and join them to form medical terms: 'pancytopenia' means deficiency of all blood cells, 'pancreatis' means 'inflammation of the pancreas,' 'luekopenia' means 'deficiency of white blood cells,' 'cytolysis' means 'breaking up of cells,' 'malnutrition' means 'bad or poor nutrition,' 'hepatitis' means 'liver inflammation' and 'myalgia' means 'muscle pain.'
Reference
It is better to refer to a dictionary written by an experienced health care professional or endorsed by a famous hospital, rather than one available on a website run by a random individual. It is always better to verify the information you have found in the dictionary with your physician, who is well-versed in medical terms.
Common Terms
Two common prefixes you should know are 'lipo,' meaning 'fat,' and 'dys,' meaning 'abnormality.' So the word 'lipodystrophy' means 'abnormal development of fat' ('trophy' means 'development').
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