hello class and welcome to chapter 5 medical terminology lecture after you complete this chapter and the related coursework you will be able to use foundational and anatomical medical terms and abbreviation in written and oral communication with colleagues and health care professionals you will understand the purpose of medical terminology be able to identify its components and be able to define an unknown medical term based on the dissection and understanding of its components you will be able to identify error-prone medical abbreviations and acronyms and also common direction movement and positional terms are also presented in this chapter okay so let's start as an introduction so as an emt you must have a strong working knowledge of medical terminology and this is because for effective communication and documentation you must be able to understand key terms symbols and abbreviations you can determine the meaning of an unknown word by understanding how terms are formed and learning the definitions for parts of a medical term also understanding medical jargon will help you communicate effectively with other members of the ems healthcare and public safety teams all right so let's talk about the anatomy of medical terminology okay so medical terms are made of distinct parts that perform specific functions changing or deleting any of these parts can significantly change the function or the meaning of the word components that comprise medical terms include four parts the four parts are first is the word root the word root is the foundation of that word then you have a prefix a prefix is what occurs before the word root then the suffix that is what occurs after the word root and then you have combining valves now these are vowels that join one or more word roots to other components of a term how the parts of a term are combined determines its meaning accurate spelling is essential in medical terminology the suffix phasea means speaking whereas phagia means eating air swallowing the prefix dis d-y-s means difficult or painful so when you add this with dysphagia it means difficulty speaking while dysphagia means difficulty eating or swallowing so once again accurate spelling is essential knowing anatomy and the context of how these words are used can also help you correctly determine and spell the term in a given situation let's talk about word roots a word root is the main part or stem of a word and this is called the word root you could also you also hear it called root word this conveys the essential meaning of the word and it frequently indicates a body part most terms have at least one word root and some have more than one root adding a prefix or suffix to the word root creates a term changing the prefix or sub suffix will change the meaning of the term and some word roots may also be used as prefixes or suffixes for other terms okay so let's talk about prefixes next a prefix is the part of that term and it appears at the beginning of the word so prefixes usually describe location or intensity a prefix gives the word root its specific meaning by learning the commonly used medical prefixes you can figure out the meaning of terms that may not be familiar to you okay then next we have suffixes so suffixes as i re as i said earlier are placed at the end of the words suffixes are usually indicate a procedure condition disease or part of speech then next we have the combining vowels a combining valve is the part of a term that connects a word root to a suffix or another word root in most cases it is an o however it may be an i or an e used when joining a suffix that begins with a constant or when joining another root word the combining valve helps ease the pronunciation of that term a combining uh form is com and it is a combining vowel shown with the root word so word building rules so there are some rules and the following summarizes the rules covered so far so the prefix is always at the beginning of the term and the suffix is always at the end of the term use the combining valve when a suffix begins with a constant constant and this makes the pronunciation easier and a term has more than one word root a combining vowel must be placed between the two even if the second root begins with a vowel okay now we have plural endings so let's talk about this to change a term from singular to plural certain rules apply so sometimes you can simply just add an s so lung for example becomes lungs but some rules are more complicated so rules you may encounter when converting from singular to plural terms are so here we go a singular word that ends in an a will change to an a e when plural singular words that end in an i s change to e s when plural singular words that end in an e x or an i x will change to i c s singular words that end in an i n book or i m or u m change to an a and singular words that end in a us will change to an i okay so special word parts prefixes can be used to indicate numbers or colors positions or directions numbers so several prefixes are used to indicate if a term involves a number such as a half one or two parts or sides so example you have uni dipli null primi multi or buy these are examples and then you have colors so several word roots are used to describe colors and some examples of these are cyano leuco uro cyro or melano positions or directions okay so you have a prefix can also be used to describe a position direction or location so examples of these are the ab the add the d the circum the preemie trans epi or supra those are all examples of those positions or directions okay so next we're going to talk about specific directional terms and why we use these these are needed to discuss specifically where an injury is located you could use them to how pain radiates in the body and so common direction movement and positional terms is what we're going to discuss next and directional terms so directional terms is where we're going to start off with and of course we uh start uh we'll start just talking about right to left so what we want to make sure that you understand though is we're when we talk about the right to left we're talking about patience right patience left okay directional terms and then you have superior and inferior okay so superior towards the head inferior but towards the feet then you have lateral or medial okay towards the um away from the middle aspect of the body medial is more towards the middle you have proximal and then you have distal proximal is more towards the trunk of the body distal is away from the trunk of the body then you have superficial which is on the top and then deep which is deep you have ventral which is more towards the front and then dorsal of course is i think of dorsal fin and that is towards the back you have palmer the palm of the hand planter the sole of the foot and then you have apex towards the bottom right the terms right and left of course just like i said earlier are the patients right and left sides not your right and left side okay and we i mentioned so superior and inferior the superior part of any body part is the portion nearer to the head from a specific reference point so the part nearer to the feet is the inferior portion as i mentioned these terms are also used to describe the relationships of one structure to another so for example the knee is superior to the foot and inferior to the pelvis okay next we have the lateral and medial so these are parts of the body that lie further from the midline like i said and they're called the further from the midline is called lateral so the outer structures and then you have medial and these are the parts that lie closer to the midline okay you have next uh proximal and distal and these are used to describe the relationship of any two structures on an extremity so proximal and distal you're gonna hear it be uh as the extremities so when you hear that term so proximal destruct describe structures that are closer to the trunk then you have of course distal its distance away that's how i think of it and it describes structures that are farther from the trunk or nearer to the free end of the extremity okay you have uh superficial and deep and superficial means closer to or on the skin deep means it's farther inside the body or tissue and away from the skin so a superficial cut versus a deep cut okay and then ventral and dorsal like i said ventral refers to the belly side of the body or the anterior surface of the body dorsal refers to the spinal side or posterior surface of the body and just as i said earlier i think of the dorsal fin of a dolphin which is on the back okay so they uh the more commonly used terms are anterior which is that front um surface of the body and posterior that's the back when you hear instead of ventral or dorsal usually you'll hear anterior or posterior all right and then palmar that's the front region of the hand and it's referred to as the palm also known as the palmer surface and then you have the bottom of the foot it's referred to as the plantar surface and then the apex of course that's the tip of any structure so i they give you an example on the slide it says the apex of the heart is the bottom or inferior portion of the ventricles of the the bottom part of the heart okay all right so next we're going to talk about movement terms so when you talk about movement terms you're talking about first we're going to talk about flexation or extension and this is referring to when we're bending a joint so when we flex a joint flexation of that joint is um bending of the joint extension is straightening of that joint okay next is adduction and abduction i think about add you're moving towards the midline you're adding that movement adduction ab is you're moving away from the midline you're abducting next some other directional terms so a body part that appears on both sides of the midline is bilateral a good way that you'll hear you'll hear this referenced as bilateral breath sounds so both sides both sides breath sounds and then your structures inside the body also appear on both sides of the midline right so sometimes that appears on only one side of the body and we usually call this unilateral and so you'll hear just that example with lung sounds again unilateral breath sounds so you're only hearing one side one lung has breath sounds right okay so use terms properly so that other medical personnel who care for a patient will know immediately where to look and what to expect okay so there are many terms used to describe the position of the patient on your arrival or during transport to the emergency department and so the body is said to be prone if they're laying face down so the prone position is a patient uh laying on the floor let's say or a bed with the face down and then the body is said to be supine supine when the position is found laying up so so face lying up is supine we'd rather have the patient's supine position than prone position right okay so the fowler position is a semi-reclining position with the head elevated to help the patient breathe easier or to control the airway so patient who is sitting upright is said to be in the fowler's position also semi-reclining with the head elevated then you have semi-fowler position and that's when the patient sits with the back of the stretcher at a 45 degree angle so not all the way at the 90 degree angle but a semi fellow position then you have a high fowler position this is when we say that the patient's sitting at a 90 degree angle okay so the first example of breaking those terms apart we're going to use is that nephropathy and so you have three distinct parts of this you have the pathy and of course that means disease so the pathy means disease the o is the combining form then you have the nephra that is the kidney so nephropathy means disease of the kidney if you when you break it apart okay all right so now let's try another one dysuria so i a we know the ia is a suffix and that is a condition of the dys that is the prefix remember we're working backwards before we're doing the uh suffix then we're going to do the prefix dys dis is the prefix and that means difficulty or painful or abnormal the you are your that's the word root and that means urine so dysuria is painful urination when you put it all together all right next we have hyperemesis you have hyper and emesis so we um we don't have a suffix but we do have a prefix and so we're going to go to the prefix first the prefix is hyper and you're going to see this used a bunch so hyper means excessive then emesis emesis is a word root and it means vomiting so hyperemesis is excessive vomiting you're going to see hyper and emesis a lot in the medical field all right analgesic here's another example so you break it apart you have a suffix and a prefix and a word root in this uh in this term so you have the ic and that is the suffix that means pertaining to okay the a n that is a prefix and that's without or absent of and the the middle term the word root is referring to pain so an analgesic when you put it together it means right what it uh said is um basically without pain pertaining to so pertaining to no pain so an analgesic is how it uh um sounds and and exactly what when you break it down what it means okay okay so now when you come into medical um the medical field you're going to have abbreviations acronyms and symbols and medical abbreviations acronyms and symbols are a type of shorthand that we use for communication this is developed because one could communicate faster using this method but we can only use commonly understood abbreviations to minimize misinterpretations and errors and so the joint commission and the institute of safe medicine practices are considered two authorities on abbreviations and provide do not use lists okay so abbreviation so remember to only use standard accepted abbreviations to avoid communication or confusion and errors and when you use an acronym you are shortening several words usually using the first letter of each word to make a shorter term that is pronounced as its own so be familiar with accepted use of abbreviations in your local jurisdiction or service area okay and then symbols as with abbreviations it is important to only use the symbols that are widely understood and accepted and there's master tables and the table is in the chapter provided through a reference list of common word roots combining forms prefixes suffixes and abbreviations okay and so let's just review so which of the following components of a medical term conveys its essential meaning do you guys remember okay that is c it's the word root and that conveys the essential meaning of the medical term okay prefixes do you remember what they indicate okay prefixes are used to indicate colors numbers positions and directions the plural form of a word bronchus is so the plural form of bronchus is d when the word ends in u.s the plural form will end in an eye so it was bronchi okay this statement the lungs are superior to the bladder indicates that the lungs are closer to the and the correct answer was the head so superior closer to the head versus inferior which is closer to the feet okay movement of an arm towards the midline is referred to remember i said that the arm is going to be if you're moving towards the midline you're adding it towards the midline and so which one is add so it's okay the term adduction is used to describe the movement of the structure towards the midline remember flexation extension is just bending at the joint okay so the correct answer was adduction a body part that lies closer to the midline when compared to another one is and that should be fairly easy it's middle so medial medial is the answer okay this is used to identify a body part that is on the belly side or anterior aspect or surface of the body okay which one was this and you should see it you should recognize it as ventral okay so the ventral which is also uh you'll heard um as the anterior aspect surface of the body the place a you place a position patient in the semi-fowler position for transport and this means the patient is this patient is sitting at a 45 degree angle is said to be semi-fowler a laceration located on the plantar surface is on the and you should recognize that as being the planter surface is the sole of the feet while the palm is the palmer okay all right and last one when using abbreviations acronyms or symbols an emt should hopefully when you look at this you are saying all of the above because an emt should be familiar with those used in your agency should be used only those we're only using those that are medically accepted and we're also using them to shorten documentation okay thank you for joining me for the medical terminology chapter 5 lecture have a great time