Med Terminology

Sand_Dollar, BSN · Feb 2, 2011

We are using 'Exploring Medical Language' by Myrna LaFleur Brooks in my online Med Term Class. It is a very useful book and comes with a CD full of practice activities and games to make it that much easier.

RLtinker, LPN · Feb 2, 2011

Hello all,
I am a pre nursing student at RIC and CCRI (inter-institutional student) and I am wondering are there any tips to learning the med terminology? I tryed to look online for flashcards or book and couldn't find any... Thank you :redpinkhe

Actually there are a ton online, you must of not looked very hard. :rolleyes: Here are a few sites to check.

http://www.flashcardexchange.com/

http://quizlet.com/

But personally I like to make my own.

I guess it should be pointed out that medical terminology usually follows systems, meaning one week you will learn words about the cardiovascular system and another the the nervous system. You can generally split words up into two group (technically there are four), the words built from word parts and the ones that are not. Word part are the easiest to learn and you should start there since they are used over and over again. For an example you will see the suffix -itis a lot. The hardest words to learn are the ones not made from word parts.

For the book we used the same one Sand-Dollar used, "Exploring Medical Language". Each chapter covers over a hundred words more or less if I remember right. Our finial covered nearly 2,000 words. But over all its a fairly easy class if you put in the time to study.

Chameleonchick · Feb 2, 2011

http://www.dmu.edu/medterms/welcome/

This should help some I hope.

marymoo24 · Feb 2, 2011

Our book had flashcards in the back, and they are also offered online, and at places like Amazon, etc.

I made my own, and they worked really well.

MAlicea · Feb 2, 2011

Thank you everyone very much!

ddunnrn · Feb 4, 2011

It's probably too late to be of any use to you, but anyone interested in the sciences should take Latin in school if at all possible. Most of medical terminology is straight from Latin, with a little bit of Greek also.

For example: Latissimus Dorsi, the broad muscle in the back, literally means "widest of the back". I had 4 years of high school Latin, and I can't overstate how much it has helped my vocabulary (90% of English concept words come from Latin by way of French) and my grammar (English grammar is very similar to Latin, with similar parts of speech, verb tenses, etc.).

Even now it might behoove you to buy a cliff-notes type or "For Dummies" type book on Latin, just to learn the basic Latin roots of English, and medical terminology.

David Dunn, RN (Nutror Relatus)