1. MEDICAL
TERMINOLOGY
Ginger C. Meeker
HCA 220
Dr. James McKinney

2. A TRAINING
PRESENTATION FOR ALL
NEW HIRES

3. BUILDING MEDICAL
WORDS
 Medical words are like puzzles
 There are three different kinds of word parts.
 Combining forms, suffixes, and prefixes

4. USING WORD PARTS…
 Prefixes (P): used at the beginning of a medical term.
• Describe, modify or limit the term
• Not all medical terms use prefixes
• Examples:
• an- without anesthesia
• Endo- innermost, within endotracheal
• Poly- many, much polyneuropathy

5. USING WORD PARTS…
Suffixes (S): the word ending
• Changes the meaning of a word…you can make a word a
noun, verb, or adjective
• All medical terms have a suffix
• Examples:
• -ly going toward distally
• -al pertaining to internal
• -ic pertaining to hypogastric
• -logy the study of cardiology
• -ics knowledge, practice orthopedics

6. USING WORD PARTS…
 Combining Form: the basic meaning of the medical term.
 Gives the word its medical meaning.
 Medical terms can contain more than one combining form.
• Examples:
• pulmon/o- lung pulmonology
• cost/o- rub costal
• vertebr/o- vertebra vertebral
• lumb/o lower back lumbar

7. USING WORD PARTS
Combining Vowel
• Usually an “o”
• Used between word roots or when a suffix begins with a
consonant.
• Examples:
• Neurology
• neur/o + -logy
• Osteocyte
• oste/o + -cyte

8. DECODING MEDICAL
TERMS…
 “Reading” a medical term is a step-by-step process.
 Start with the suffix and define it
 Next the prefix and define it
 Then, go to the combining form and define
 Lastly, define the word as a whole

9. DECODING MEDICAL
TERMS…
Practice:
• Neuropathy
• Megakaryoblasts
• Cardiomegaly
• Malignancy
• Laminectomy
• Cerebrospinal
• Contusion
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Bronchitis
• Pulmonology

10. PRONUNCIATION
 Sometimes seeing the
actual picture, such as this
skeleton, helps in the
pronunciation of a medical
word. Words associated with
a skeleton are bones, cartilage,
joint, marrow, etc….

12. • MEDICAL LANGUAGE
• A living language
• You are challenged to listen, speak, write, watch, respond, examine,
think, and make connections. (Turley, S. p. xiii)

13. THE LANGUAGE OF
MEDICINE
 “There is no recognized discipline called medical linguistics,
but perhaps there ought to be one. The language of medicine
offers intriguing challenges both to medical historians and to
linguists. Classical scholars have analyzed the contents and
language of the most ancient medical records in great detail, but
the later development of medical terminology has received much
less attention.” (Wulff, MD, H. p.1)

14. MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY
 Important to every outlet within the medical field.
 The communication pathway for all medical professionals.
 Falsification or wrong use of medical terms can be costly not
only for the patient but everyone involved.

15. REFERENCES
 Turley, S. (2007). Preface. In Pearson Prentice Hall (Ed.), Medical
Language (pp. xiii). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education,
Inc..
 (2011). Yahoo! Image Search Results. Retrieved from
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yf
p-t-701-s&va=nervous+system
 Right Health. (2011). Righthealth.com. Retrieved from
http://www.righthealth.com/topic/Image_Of_Muscle?p=l&as=msn&ac=
529&kgl=38687204

16. REFERENCES CONT’D
 Wulff, MD., H. (2004). The language of medicine. Journal of the
Royal
Society of Medicine, v.97(4), 1. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi
.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079361/