Veronica Hackethal - The Complete Idiots Guide to Medical Terminology: Master the Vocabulary You Need to Ace Medical Courses and Certifications

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Happy learning!

Mike Sanders
Publisher, Alpha Books

This book is dedicated to my mother, Dorothy Hackethal.

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International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61564-358-5
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2013933131

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Introduction

When I started medical school, most medical terms were a mystery to me. I looked at the mountain of terms thrown at me at a rapid-fire pace during the first semester, and I was scared. But I was also intrigued. Where did these words come from? How should I pronounce them? What was the hidden logic that could make memorizing them easier?

In medical school, I didnt have a book like this one. I had to come up with my own strategy for making sense of medical terminology. So I started making lists of related words, many of which share common origins in Greek and Latin. My fathers stories about his own medical training made me realize the importance of these languages in forming the basis of medical terminology. When he immigrated to the United States, he had already completed his medical training. Like most foreign medical graduates, he had to retake his medical licensing exams in the United States. English was still a little shaky for him. He always said that the only reason he passed his exams was because he knew Latin.

When I first started writing this book, I thought that learning medical terminology was just like learning a foreign language. My past studies in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin made me familiar with language acquisition. But I realized that learning medical terminology involves more than the rote memorization used in learning a foreign language.

Most medical terms have precise meanings that are intended to prevent errors and misunderstandings in the clinical arena. So acquiring a medical vocabulary entails developing a certain amount of understanding about the science and biological processes described by the terms, in addition to simply memorizing the terms themselves. This book reflects this way of learning. Each chapter contains lists of terms, their pronunciations, and their definitions that you can use for purposes of memorization. But there are also sections that provide a background to the subject. These sections describe the importance of these terms, the processes involved, and the biological functions each term describes. Knowing the why behind a term can aid in memorization and clear up confusion.