How to Utilize Medical Terminology

Medical terminology consists of two or more words combined into a single term to signify a certain diagnosis, such as the term gastroenteritis, which indicates the the stomach and small intestine's inflammation. Medical terminology also references medical procedures and equipment. For specific jobs, such as a that of the medical transcriptionist, you need to have a basic understanding of medical terminology while listening to the doctor's dictation. Once you understand the terms, you can properly transcribe the terminology into the word processor.

Instructions

• 1

  Break apart the the medical term by finding recognizable parts of the word and separating them from the other parts of the word.

• 2

  Figure out the suffix and the prefix of each word. Locate the root word of the medical term. Divide the word apart if there is more than one root word.

  For example, word such as preoperative would have the prefix of pre-. The word cadiac would have the suffix of -ac. Gastroenteritis has two roots, gastro- and -oenter, to represent the stomach and small intestine. The suffix, -itis, means inflammation.

• 3

  Recognize medical terminology by the anatomy the terms represent and in the order of where the organs are located in the body. If the term describes a diagnostic procedure, the name of the equipment comes last in the term, with the part of the anatomy that the equipment is used on as the first term.

  For example, gastroenteritis has the word gastro-, to indicate the stomach, as the first word and -oenter, to indicate the small intestine, as the second word. The reason this is the correct word order is because food enters the stomach first before entering the intestine. For medical equipment such as a rhinoscope, rhino- represents the nose and -scope defines the type of tool used to examine the nose.