Medical Terminology Helps Clarify Understanding For Future Employees

With what seems like everyday advances in technology, the medical field is quickly becoming one of the biggest career fields out there. A burgeoning job market calls for more and more employees. With a college degree, you have the ability to find a job in the wide range of medical jobs. You don't need a PhD in order to find work in the medical field; in fact, there are probably more jobs available in auxiliary positions than to licensed physicians.

As with most specific areas of employment, the medical arena has a particular terminology all to its own. If you're unfamiliar with it and you walk into a doctor's office, it sounds like everyone working there is speaking a completely foreign language. Actually, that's not too far off from the truth - the etymology of medical terminology comes from words that are definitely not a part of English.

The purpose of medical terminology is to accurately describe the components and conditions of the human body via a specific vocabulary. The terminology used in medicine often uses words created from prefixes and suffixes in both Latin and Ancient Greek. So when you hear medical terminology, you're often actually hearing a foreign language!

Actually, medical terms follow a fairly simple set of rules when it comes to constructing vocabulary. Words typically contain three parts: a word root, a prefix and a suffix. You use these "parts" to construct a whole word that describes what you're looking at, whether it be part of the body or something affecting the body.

Building words in this style is intended to be systematic and clear so that all medical professionals know what the words describe, without confusion that can cause misunderstanding. The word root is essentially the meat of the word. The word root is usually Latin or Ancient Greek and describes a body part - for example, there are two word roots for a person's kidneys: nephros, from Greek, and renes, from Latin.

However, the word root is usually not capable of standing alone as a word. In order to create a functional word for medical terms, a suffix or prefix (or sometimes both) must be used in conjunction with the root. To describe an inflammation of the kidney, you would combine the word root "nephros" with the suffix "-itis" to create "nephritis."

Fortunately, there are medical terminology classes available for students who are interested in working in the medical field, but who don't yet "speak the language." These classes are geared toward students who are specifically not medical professionals. The intention is that you'll walk away from the class with an understanding of the language of medicine and parts of human anatomy.

No matter what part of the medical field you want to work in, speaking the language is very important to your success in the job. Even if you have no interest in completing medical school on line or on campus and instead want to work as an assistant or office manager, a medical terminology class will be important for you. Add this to your degree track, find scholarship and grant programs that apply, and soon you'll be in a rewarding career.