"Medical terminology is a language used to precisely describe the human body including all its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon it."
Understanding and being familiar with medical terms used in the industry is important for medical journalism. This topic covers basic medical terminology used in diagnosis, treatment, and communication between medical professionals.
Basic Anatomy and Physiology: Understanding the organization and function of the human body is critical in comprehending medical language. Students must have a basic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, including body systems, organs, tissues, and cell structures.
Medical Terminology: Understanding the components of medical terminology, including word roots, prefixes, and suffixes are crucial. These components are used to build medical words, making them easier to understand and remember.
Laboratory Tests: Knowledge of laboratory tests is essential to understand medical documentation. It will help you to know the methods used to diagnose, monitor and treat diseases.
Pharmacology: Knowledge of drugs and their uses, including their side effects, is necessary. Different types of drugs available in the market and their effects also need to be understood.
Diseases and Disorders: Understanding the common diseases and disorders, their causes, symptoms, and treatment options, is essential. This knowledge will help you understand medical terminology, and how doctors diagnose and treat their patients.
Medical Procedures and Interventions: This topic revolves around the medical procedures and interventions used to treat diseases and disorders. Knowing the reason why a particular intervention is done and the correct terminology used to describe it is necessary.
Medical Specialties: Explore the different medical specialties, including their role in healthcare and the related terminologies.
Medical Ethics and Terminology: Medical journalism requires an understanding of the ethical issues that arise around medical terminologies. It is important to understand the use of terminology and its impact on patients and healthcare professionals.
Medical Records Management: Knowledge of how medical records are stored, managed and maintained is crucial. This includes the various medical terminologies used to document patient data.
Emerging Medical Technologies: Learn about the latest medical technologies and their impact on healthcare. Understanding the terminologies used in these emerging fields will provide an insight into the future of medicine.
Anatomy and Physiology: This type of medical terminology focuses on the study of the human body's structure and functions.
Medical Abbreviations: Abbreviations are commonly used in the medical field to save time and writing space. They can be difficult to understand for those outside of the medical community.
Medical Jargon: Often used by healthcare professionals, medical jargon consists of technical and scientific terms that may not be easily understood by the general public.
Medical Slang: Slang terms may be used among healthcare professionals and/or patients in informal settings, but they should not be used in official medical documentation.
Medical Eponyms: Eponyms are medical terms derived from the name of a person, such as Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease.
Medical Acronyms: Acronyms consist of letters from different words and are commonly used in medical settings. Examples include CPR, HIV, and MRI.
Medical Prefixes and Suffixes: These are added to the beginning or end of a medical term to modify its meaning, such as 'hypo-' (meaning low) or '-itis' (meaning inflammation).
Medical Classifications: Medical classifications are used to categorize and classify diseases, conditions, medications, and procedures.
Medical Nomenclature: This term refers to the system of naming and classifying living organisms or their parts in a standardized way.
Medical Ethical Terminology: This terminology concerns the ethics and values of healthcare and medicine, including issues of patient autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, and access to care.
"Medical terminology is used in the field of medicine."
"Medical terminology has quite regular morphology, the same prefixes and suffixes are used to add meanings to different roots."
"For example, in the disorder known as hypertension, the prefix 'hyper-' means 'high' or 'over'."
"The root word 'tension' refers to pressure."
"So the word 'hypertension' refers to abnormally high blood pressure."
"The roots, prefixes, and suffixes are often derived from Greek or Latin."
"The roots, prefixes, and suffixes are often quite dissimilar from their English-language variants."
"This regular morphology means that once a reasonable number of morphemes are learned it becomes easy to understand very precise terms assembled from these morphemes."
"Much medical language is anatomical terminology, concerning itself with the names of various parts of the body."
"Medical terminology is a language used to precisely describe the human body including all its components, processes, conditions affecting it, and procedures performed upon it."
"Medical terminology is used in the field of medicine."
"Medical terminology has quite regular morphology, the same prefixes and suffixes are used to add meanings to different roots."
"For example, in the disorder known as hypertension, the prefix 'hyper-' means 'high' or 'over'."
"The root word 'tension' refers to pressure."
"So the word 'hypertension' refers to abnormally high blood pressure."
"The roots, prefixes, and suffixes are often derived from Greek or Latin."
"The roots, prefixes, and suffixes are often quite dissimilar from their English-language variants."
"This regular morphology means that once a reasonable number of morphemes are learned it becomes easy to understand very precise terms assembled from these morphemes."
"Much medical language is anatomical terminology, concerning itself with the names of various parts of the body."