Hello. Welcome to Foundations of Medical Terminology. This course has been presented through the American Association of Medical Assistants. The author of the course is Sue Hawes, CMA, AAMA, and the recorder is Loxie Kistler, CMA, AAMA. This presentation is about the language of medicine, medical terminology. Medical terminology is used to communicate among all allied healthcare professionals to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. When healthcare professionals employ medical terminology, they are using a common language, a common set of terms, to talk about patient symptoms, diagnostics, and therapeutics. The program objectives for this presentation are, upon completion, the participant will understand and use root words, suffixes, and prefixes. The participant will understand look-alike, sound-alike, and word parts and abbreviations. The participant should be able to determine definitions based on word parts, understand anatomic reference systems, and understand the structures of the body. Not only is it very important to be able to read and recognize and speak medical terminology and communication, it's very important for us to understand where it came from. Medical terminology is not new. It has been in existence for thousands of years. As high as 90% of all medical terms originated in the Greek and Roman culture. We can thank early scholars and scientists and physicians, such as Aristotle and Hippocrates, for using medical terminology in their writing and in their everyday practice. As early as the 4th and 5th centuries BC, medical terminology documents have been found that were created by these early scholars and scientists. Adding to the body of medical terminology is largely attributed to technology and new diagnoses. We've added many, many new terms through radiology, such as MRIs and CAT scans and PET scans. In cardiology, coronary artery bypass, your CABGES, or your cardiac cath labs. So as we continue to expand the knowledge of medicine, we keep adding new terms. An overview of the word parts of medical terminology are as follows. A word root indicates the involved body part. For example, gastra means stomach. The second component part, a combining form, is when two root words are combined or when a suffix beginning with a consonant is added. When shown alone, they have a forward slash. Your combining form is usually an O. We still have AEIOU as vowels and sometimes Y are considered as a vowel. Others are consonants. A suffix usually indicates a procedure, condition, disorder, or disease. It is always at the end of a word. Oftentimes, it is preceded by a hyphen. An example is ITIS, I-T-I-S. That is a suffix. You could put that with the root word gastra to form gastritis, inflammation of the stomach. On the other side of the root word is a prefix. A prefix usually, but not always, indicates location, time, number, or status. The prefix is at the beginning of the word. An example of a prefix is hyper, which means excessive or increased. An example of a prefix is hyper in front of thermia, which means excessive heat. Looking at the components for medical terminology, the first to talk about is the word root. Some general guidelines for a word root is the word root cannot stand alone. It needs a suffix or a prefix and maybe a combining form added to it. The suffix would always go at the end of the word and the prefix would be at the beginning of the word. A root word contains the basic meaning of the term. Some word part and word root guidelines are as follows. A word root cannot stand alone. A suffix must always be added at the end of the word to complete the term. If a prefix is added, it is always placed at the beginning of the word. The rules for creating a combining form by adding a vowel apply when a suffix beginning with a consonant is added to that root word. Some examples of word roots are as follows. And each of these word roots have had a combining form O added. For example, myelo, spinal cord, myo, muscle, osteo, bone, neuro, nerve, and arthro means joint. Additional examples of word roots, some of these describe colors such as cyano, blue, erythro, red, leuco, white, milano, black, and polio, gray. Listed on this slide is another group of commonly used word roots or root words that you will see as the foundation of terms in medical terminology. Some of those are brachy, which means arm, gastro, stomach, enter, intestines, cardi, heart, pulmon, lung, oto, ear, nepher, kidney. And on the column on the right, you will also see that ren means kidney. Rhine means nose. Derm is the term for skin. Cephal means head. Crani means brain. Hepat is liver. And arthro is joint. And this is just an example of the many, many root words that form the foundation of terms that we use in medical terminology. Moving along, we will now look at combining forms. A combining form includes a vowel, usually the letter O, which is added to the root word. The result is a medical term that is easier to pronounce and it flows a little better when it is mentioned in conversation. The rules for use of a combining vowel include when joining two word roots, the combining vowel is always added to the first word root. A combining vowel is added to the second word root only if the suffix begins with a consonant. An example is the medical term gastroenteritis. This combines two word roots. You have gastro for stomach, enter for intestine. We also see a suffix here, itis, for inflammation. The combining form is placed between gastro and enter. And since the suffix itis begins with a vowel, there is no combining form added before the suffix. So the total term is gastroenteritis, which when we translate this, interpret this, it means inflammation of the stomach and intestines. The next component part for medical terminology is the prefix. A prefix comes at the beginning of a word. It oftentimes is followed by a hyphen. For example, enter means in between or among. Intra means within or inside. And this is an example of a look-alike sound-alike word. Enter and intra. Spelled nearly the same, sounds nearly the same, but they mean different things. An example would be interstitial cystitis. Inflammation within the walls of the bladder. An example using intra is intravenous fluids. Fluids administered within a vein for dehydration. Adding to those root words are the prefixes. The prefixes come before the root word. And prefixes oftentimes denote position, location, size, and number. And some of those commonly seen prefixes are ante, before, brady, slow, tacky, fast, cron, a long time, retro, behind, ambi, both sides, auto, meaning self, by, to, endo, inside or within, extra means outside, hetero is different, olig means scant, and poly means many. And as you can see, several of those prefixes do denote number, location, or size. And as we move forward, we will see how putting these together with those word roots form medical terms that have total complete meanings. The final component part for medical terminology is the suffix. A suffix is usually added at the end of a word to complete that term. In medical terminology, suffixes usually indicate a procedure, a condition, a disorder, a disease. This is quite different than the meaning of our prefixes. Prefixes usually describe a position, a number, or a size. Your suffixes are added at the end of a word to complete a description of the term. A suffix can be used as a noun ending, a meaning, abnormal condition or disease, something related to pathology, or related to a procedure. Sometimes the suffix may also be a double R suffix, and the suffix may start with an RR and then the rest of the suffix. Suffixes as noun endings usually denote a person, place, or thing. Suffixes used as noun endings include a, um, y, e, and us. An example of this is the term cranium. Cranium means skull and um is a noun ending. The combining form is integral to the usage of suffixes. You would use a combining vowel when the suffix begins with a consonant. For example, the word root neuro is combined with plasty, which is surgical repair, or rafi, surgical suturing. You would use the combining O because both suffixes begin with a consonant. Using that combining form with the root word, you end up with neuroplasty, which is surgical repair of a nerve, or neurorafi, which is suturing together the ends of a severed nerve. But remember, a combining vowel is not used when the suffix begins with a vowel. For example, itis, which is inflammation, or ectomy, which is surgical removal, are used with a word root. You do not need to add a combining vowel. For example, the term tonsillitis, inflammation of the tonsils. Itis begins with a vowel, so there is no need for a combining form. The same is true of tonsillectomy, surgical removal of the tonsils. There is no need for the combining form. Some of the suffixes mean pertaining to. When you see a specific suffix on the end of the word root, it means pertaining back to that word root. An adjective is a word that defines or describes. Many suffixes meaning pertaining to change the meaning of a word root into an adjective. For example, cardi means heart. When you add a C on the end of that to have the term cardiac, that means pertaining to the heart. Some suffixes, when they are added to the word root, mean an abnormal condition or disease. Examples of these are ago, ism, isis, osis, ia, iasis, and ion. Now it is time to look at the terms that we end at the end of the word, the suffixes. These often clarify the root word. They add another description so we have a better understanding. Some of those are blast, which means germ or bud. Cyte, cell. Dynia, for pain. As well as algae, both of those terms denote pain. Stasis, is to stop. Emia, means blood. Lysis, is a breakdown. Oma, tumor. Penia, is breathing. Ac, pertaining to. Eel, relating to. Ectomy, surgical removal of. Itis, inflammation of. And malacia, which means softening. And you oftentimes can use these suffixes to talk about an entire group of symptoms. For example, taking the suffix penia, which means breathing. We looked at the prefix dys, D-Y-S. You can put dys in front of penia. Dyspnea, difficult breathing. The prefix a, means without. Now this is a term you don't want to see. Apnea, is lack of breathing. The prefix eu, means good or normal. You can put that in front of penia to mean eupnea, which means normal breathing. Another example is the suffix emia, which means blood. You can put leuk in front of that to make leukemia, talking about white blood, the white blood cell. So you oftentimes can come up with groups of symptoms using that suffix and just adding different prefixes to the term as well. An example of one of these suffixes, meaning condition, is seen in the term gastrosis. Gastro means stomach. Osis means abnormal condition or disease. When combined, the term gastrosis means an abnormality found in the stomach. or disease. When combined, the term gastrosis means an abnormality found in the stomach. Another commonly used suffix is the suffix ology, which means the study of. An example is pathology. Path is disease and ology means study of. So combining these two means the study of diseases. You also have cardiology, which is the study of the heart. Suffixes related to pathology describe specific disease conditions. On this slide, we see many commonly used suffixes in medical terminology. The first one is another example of look-alike, sound-alike terms. Sclerosis is an abnormal hardening. Stenosis is an abnormal narrowing. Algia is pain and suffering. Dynia means pain. Itis is inflammation. Megalie is enlargement. Malacia is abnormal softening. And necrosis means tissue death. Examples of these usage may be appendicitis, inflammation of the appendix. Cardiomegalie, which means enlargement of the heart. Osteomalacia, which would mean softening of the bones. Today in the healthcare world, as our knowledge base and technology increases, and we now know that the half-life of medical knowledge is three to five years. So what we know today is expanded by 50% in three to five years. We have many specialties that have developed over the years. Years ago, a physician would treat the entire body because their knowledge was very limited. The tools that they had were limited. The amount of medications were limited. Today, we have such a vast amount of knowledge that we have many specialties that have erupted. And here are some of those. Dermatology is the study of skin disorders. Gastroenterology is the study of gastrointestinal disorders. Cardiology, study of the heart. Endocrinology, which is study of the endocrine system and all of the organs associated with hormones. And that includes the male and female reproductive system. Neurology, study of the brain and nervous system. Perhaps of all the specialties, this is the one that our knowledge base keeps expanding with because we still, every day, are discovering more and more new findings about the human brain and nervous system. And hematology, which is the study of blood and its disorders. You have other specialties, such as oncology. ONC, meaning tumor. So those are our cancer specialists. And since cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, this is another area that has been expanding by leaps and bounds, such as cardiology has as well. And certain suffixes are related to procedures. For example, scopy means a visual examination to look inside, usually of an organ. Sentesis is a puncture to remove excessive fluid. Agraphy is producing a picture or a record. Gram also is producing a picture or a record. And plasty is a surgical repair. So a dermoplasty would be a surgical repair of the skin. And notice we added an O there because plasty, the suffix, begins with a consonant. So we added an O for dermoplasty. Your scopy, gastroscopy, looking inside of the stomach. A sentesis you may see with the word root thorax or thoraco for chest. Thoracocentesis is draining fluid from the chest. And again, we've added O's in there as a combining form because the suffix does begin with a consonant. Medical terms can be combined to describe procedures that we use today in medicine. A lot of these procedures are used as diagnostic tools to help us confirm a diagnosis, as well as some are treatments that you can actually remove a polyp during a scope of some sort. Here are some examples of some procedures that you will see today in the world of medicine. Thoracentesis, thora meaning chest. Sentesis is a drainage process. So a thoracentesis essentially is removing fluid from the patient's thoracic or chest area. Abdominocentesis, draining fluid out of the abdomen. You see this procedure done in patients with liver failure. Arthrocentesis, fluid in a joint, in a knee, in an ankle, in an elbow, in a shoulder. Cardiogram, you've all heard of the electrocardiogram, the EKG or the ECG. This is a picture of the heart, an EKG tracing. Gastroscopy is looking into the stomach. Now that is done through the mouth, down the esophagus, into the stomach. It is less invasive than a surgical procedure would be opening the stomach and looking. During a gastroscopy, it helps us diagnose what might be going on with the patient. If the patient has an ulcer that might be bleeding, they can cauterize or clot that bleeds so it stops. Sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopies are in the news a lot today. The increase of colon cancer in the country is alarmingly high and increasing. So sigmoidoscopies and colonoscopies are less invasive procedures that patients can undergo, one day prep, have the procedure, and then that afternoon, things are back to normal. It not only helps us look and diagnose any condition through these procedures and using certain instruments as seen in the picture on the right, you could actually remove some precancerous polyps. Dermoplasty is a surgical repair of the skin that can be from lacerations, from trauma, to plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons. And then another term is radiography, which is using x-ray rays, radio waves, to produce a picture. Now, x-ray has been around since the late 1800s, but this area is perhaps one of the greatest in modern technology that has been expanded to help with diagnostics and therapeutics as far as treating the patient. As we talked about earlier, some suffixes begin with a double R. These are Greek words. Rage and ragia means bleeding, which are used to describe sudden, severe bleeding. If you put the word root hemo, which means blood, heme, which means blood, in front of those, hemorrhage is the loss of a large amount of blood in a short time. Raphe means surgical suturing to close a wound. Rhea means flow or discharge. And rexus means rupture. An example with rhea, you may see dys, which means painful or difficult, meno, which means menses, and rhea, dysmenorrhea, which would mean painful menstruation. Leaving suffixes and now moving to prefixes. Your prefixes oftentimes describe direction, quantity, size, and amount. When you look at terms that begin with a prefix, it could be an ABAB, which means away from, or negative, or absent. In means in or intro, without. Dextro would be your right side. Micro means very small. Ex is out of, away from. Oligo is scanty or few. Macro means large, very abnormal size. Post is behind or after. Mega or megalo also means very large or great. Pre is before. Ad is toward, in the direction of. Again, ab and ad are two of those look-alike, sound-alike terms. And sinister is to the left side. Another one that we can add here is mono, which means single. You may see that used in a lab result, monocyte, a single cell. You could see the prefix oligo used with oligouria, scant urine. So these definitely give you direction either towards or away from. They give you the quantity, single or many, or a size, small or large. Now it's time to do a checkpoint exercise. Just checking our understanding and our remembrance of what some of the word roots, the prefixes and suffixes mean. So what we'll do is we will look at the definition, I'll read the definition, and then you can look at the possible answers in the right in that column and try to match those up. And then we'll check our understanding. Okay, the first one is bad, painful or difficult. The second one is excessive or increased. The third definition is enlargement. The fourth definition is pain and suffering. And the fifth definition is surgical removal. So let's check our understanding now. Bad, painful and difficult is dis, D-Y-S. Excessive or increased is hyper. Number three, enlargement is megaly. Number four, pain or suffering is algae. And the fifth and last one, surgical removal is ectomy. Okay, let's do another checkpoint. Again, I'll read the definition and you look for the possible answers in the column on the right. Number one is visual examination. Number two is a rupture. Number three is abnormal narrowing. Number four is abnormal hardening. And number five is flow or discharge. And all of these answers are suffixes. Okay, number one, visual examination is scopi. Number two, a rupture is rexus. Number three, abnormal narrowing is stenosis. Number four, abnormal hardening is sclerosis. And number five, flow or discharge is rhea, R-R-H-E-A. I hope you got all those right. At this point in the presentation, we're going to change topics and start looking at structural terminology associated with the body. The first item we want to talk about are the body parts. The next item we want to talk about are the body planes. And in the presentation, you see a diagram. Your sagittal plane divides the body into the right side and the left side. Your coronal plane divides the body into the front and the back. And your transverse plane divides the body into the top and the bottom. And here is a more in-depth explanation of the body planes. Your mid-sagittal divides the body into equal left and right halves. Sagittal is left and right. Mid-sagittal is equal left and right. Your transverse divides the body into the upper or superior portion. And the bottom lower or inferior portion. Your frontal plane divides the body into the anterior or central front part and the posterior or dorsal back parts. Looking at an additional explanation of the body directional terms, ventral means front, dorsal means back, anterior means front, posterior means back, superior is above or towards the head, inferior is below or towards the feet. Cephalic also means towards the head. You will see these terms used in histories and physicals, in notes describing injuries, in notes describing pains. You would see this in surgical reports of what portion of the body was operated on. This slide gives us some diagrams of those directional terms. And they are depicted as opposites. Superior, towards the head, inferior, towards the feet. Lateral is a term that means towards the side. Medial means towards the middle. Proximal means closest to the point of origin. And distal means more far from the point of origin. For example, the knee is more proximal to the hip than the toes are. The toes are more distal than the knee is. And again, you will see these terms used as descriptors to describe procedures that are done, surgeries that are done, location of injuries. Those are very, very helpful because they give the individual reading the reports or in conversation an idea of where an injury or pain or a surgical procedure is located on the patient. This slide shows us a continuation of the body directional terms. Caudal, towards the lower part of the body, which is opposite of cephalic. Proximal, again, is situated nearest the midline or beginning of the body, closest to the point of origin. The opposite of proximal is distal. Medial is towards the midline. The opposite of medial is lateral, away from the midline. Now here's a term that we have not talked about yet. Bilateral, relating to both sides. Let's look at the body's major cavities. The body is divided into cavities. Again, so we are all looking at the same areas using the same terminology. The dorsal cavity is along the back of the body and the head, and your dorsal cavity is made up of two portions. The cranial cavity is the skull and surrounds the brain. That term cranial means pertaining to the skull. The second portion of the dorsal cavity is the spinal cavity, which contains the spinal columns. Moving further into the system of body cavities, on this slide we see most of the body cavities. On the left-hand part of the slide you will see, again, the dorsal body cavity, which consists of the cranial cavity and the spinal or the vertebral cavity. You also, in the chest area, have the thoracic cavity. This contains the lungs, the heart, and the sternum. The abdominal cavity contains your stomach, your liver, your spleen, and your intestines, as an example. Your abdominal pelvic cavity is the lower part of the abdominal cavity, and that contains reproductive organs in the female. Your pelvic cavity contains your bladder, reproductive organs of the male and the female. Now when you look at the thoracic cavity, the abdominal cavity, and the pelvic cavity, those are combined to be called the ventral body cavity. So your dorsal body cavity is the back part of the body, the cranium and the spinal column. Your ventral body cavity contains your thoracic cavity, the abdominal, and pelvic cavities. To help us further visualize descriptions and notes about patients, the abdominal area is split into nine quadrants or regions. There is a right group, a group in the middle, and a third of them are on the left. So those upper quadrants are the right hypochondriac regions, your epigastric region, which is over the stomach, and your left hypochondriac region. The second layer, the right lumbar region, the umbilical region, and the left lumbar region. That third layer is the right iliac region, the hypogastric region, and the left iliac region. You will oftentimes see these written in notes as the right upper quadrant, or the left upper quadrant, or the upper middle quadrant. Now many of you have heard of the term appendicitis. The right lower quadrant is where the pain for appendicitis often appears. Your right upper quadrant is where the liver, the spleen, the gallbladder is. So pain in that area may indicate an injury or an illness in those major organs. The usage of medical terminology includes specialized terms that are associated with specialty areas. One of those areas is dealing with pregnancy and neonates, the newborn. Some common root words that you will see associated with these are cephal, which means head. The head diameter of the newborn is very important looking for parameters of measurements that are within normal limits. It's also very important during pregnancy to look for the option to have a normal delivery or a surgical c-section delivery. Gravid is a term for pregnancy, lac pertaining to milk, nate pertaining to birth, prim means first, pseudo is false, gynic female, and mest means month. Now some of the prefixes that we can add to those root words are ante, which means before, neo, a term for new, post would be after, multi meaning many, para meaning birth, and tri which means three. Now earlier we saw the prefix bi which means two and tri means three. Some additional terms that deal with pregnancy and the neonate include the suffixes gen, producing, amnio, amniotic fluid, oid, resembling, tosia, dislabor, and tome, to cut into. Now when we combine some of these prefixes, suffixes, and those root words we come up with medical terms such as neonatology, study of the newborn, primagravida, first pregnancy, dystocia, something that no one wants, a difficult labor. Prenatal is before birth, whereas postnatal would be after the birth. Lactation is a process to produce milk, and trimester is a period of three months, and when we see notations about pregnancy it will be denoted usually as the first trimester, the first three months, the second trimester, the second three months, and the third trimester, which would be the final three months. On the other end of the age spectrum we see specialized terms associated with geriatrics. Some of those terms include gerontology, which is the study of older aged people, ger meaning old age. We see certain conditions such as presbycusis. Presby is a term that means older age. Cusis means hearing. Presbyopia, presby again meaning older age, opia meaning vision or sight. A condition that has to do with the eyes that is very common in older individuals is glaucoma. Glau meaning gray, oma meaning tumor, and in glaucoma you get a mass that produces vision that is gray in nature. Edentulous. E in front of the root word means without. Dent means teeth, so edentulous is without teeth. And a term that we unfortunately have to often associate with geriatrics is the term mortality. Mort means death. So these are terms that are associated with older individuals, and of course gerontology has become a specialty all on its own as the older population is one of the fastest growing populations in the United States today. As a health care professional and working in the field of medicine, it's very important that we are on the lookout for those look-alike, sound-alike terms. They may be spelled similarly or pronounced similarly, and if not interpreted correctly, could lead to a mistake which could cause harm and unfortunately sometimes a fatal error for the patient. Examples of those are ad-duck and ab-duck. Ad-duck means bring closer to the body. Ad-duck means move away from. You would see this in the field of orthopedics. Have the patient raise their arm and do they have pain when they bring their arm down towards the body or up and away from the body. Another set of look-alike, sound-alike terms are dysphagia, difficult swallowing, and dysphagia, difficulty speaking. Even though both of these may be associated with a stroke, they have very, very different meanings. The term inter- between inter- means intestine. Again, on the right-hand side of the slide, inter- between, intra- within. Super- large or increased, supra- above. And the last one on this slide, ileum, pronounced exactly the same, the only difference, one has an I, one has an E. The ileum with an I is a part of the bony pelvis. The ileum with an E is a part of the small intestine. This could have extreme repercussions if the appropriate ileum is not noted, recognized, and treated. We have talked about joining prefixes, root words, and suffixes, and combining forms throughout the presentation. Now let's form some words and put them together so you can see how this is done to create complete medical terms. For example, the term polycythemia, a condition in many blood cells. Cyt- meaning cell, emia- blood, and poly- meaning many. Rhinoplasty, a surgical repair of the nose. Appendectomy, surgical removal of the appendix. Bradycardia, slowness of the heart. The opposite of that would be the term tachycardia, rapid heart rate. Endoscopy, to look inside, a visual examination. Nephrology, study of the kidneys. Hepatectomy, removal of the liver. Bilateral, both sides. And gynecology, the study of the female. So when you look at these medical terms, you'll need to break them down. Look for that main thought, the root word, which is often an organ, a part of the body, a condition. And then look and see if there is a suffix, which is an adjective that further describes it. And then look for the prefix. Is it giving us a location, a size, or number? So medical terminology can be like learning a foreign language, but once it's broken down into the component parts and you are familiar with those component parts, it becomes much easier to recognize in reading and to communicate with and speaking. Now's the time for us to do some more checkpoints to just evaluate and measure our understanding. So I will read the question and you will have a few seconds to select your answer and then we will go over those answers. So the first question is, what is the term meaning nearest the midline or beginning of a body structure? The second question is, what is the term meaning situated in the back? The third question, the body is divided into anterior and posterior by what body plane? And the fourth question, the body is divided into equal vertical left and right halves by what plane? So the answer to the first question, I hope that you chose medial. That is the term that means nearest the middle. The second question, the term meaning situated in the back is posterior. The third question, the body is divided into anterior and posterior by what plane? That third one is the frontal plane. And the last question in this checkpoint group, the body is divided into equal vertical left and right halves by what plane? And that is the mid-sagittal. Another group looking at terms. Some are word roots, some are, and the rest of them are suffixes. Okay, on the left-hand side, the term for abnormal hardening, the term for bad, difficult, or painful, the term for inflammation, the term for surgical creation of an artificial opening, and number five is abnormal condition or disease. Okay, the term for abnormal hardening is sclerosis. You would see that used in a patient who has plaque or fatty deposits in an artery, and that would be called arterial sclerosis. Bad, painful, difficult is DYS. Inflammation, ITIS. Creating a surgical opening is ostomy, and an abnormal condition or disease is osis. Our last group of checkpoint questions are true and false questions. The first one, the combining form hemo means blood. The second one, the suffix algea means pain. The third, the combining form osteo means bone. In four, the prefix hyper means deficient or decreased, and in five, the combining form rhino means nose. Now, as we went through those, if you marked all of them as true except number four, number four is false. Hyper means excessive or increased. The remaining statements there are all true. Well, it has been a pleasure to spend some time with you on this presentation of foundation of medical terminology. Again, I can't stress enough the importance of medical terminology and the ability to speak it, to read it, and to be able to explain it to the patient. Medical terminology can be very complicated to a patient, so we need to make sure that we are using medical terminology at the appropriate times, and that is in conversations with our colleagues, other allied health professionals. Proper usage and proper interpretation of and reading of medical terminology helps us communicate with other health care professionals for continuity of care and to promote patient well-being and safety. Thank you very much.

medical terminology

American Association of Medical Assistants

common language

healthcare professionals

root words

body planes

directional terms

body cavities

patient safety