The language of medicine is a specialized vocabulary used by health care practitioners. Many current medical word elements originated as early as the 1st century B.C., when Hippocrates practiced medicine. With advancements in medicine, new terms have evolved to reflect these innovations. For example, radiographic terms, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound (US), are now used to describe current diagnostic procedures.
A medical word consists of some or all of the following elements: word root, combining form, suffix, and prefix. How you combine these elements, and whether all or some of them are present in a medical term, determines the meaning of a word. The purpose of this course is to help you identify these elements in order to construct medical terms correctly.
Objectives
Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to:
• Identify the four word elements used to build medical words.
• Divide medical words into their component parts.
• Apply the basic rules to define and build medical words.
• Locate the pronunciation guidelines chart and interpret pronunciation marks.
• Identify the meaning of a vast majority of prefixes and suffixes.
• Demonstrate your knowledge of this chapter by completing the learning activities.
