What's in a Medical Terminology Course, Unit by Unit

Medical terminology is a vocabulary course, but it is not a list of thousands of unrelated words. Most terms are built from a small set of Greek and Latin parts, so a well-ordered course teaches the parts first and then reuses them in every body system. Encodr's free Medical Terminology course is built that way: 17 units, 82 chapters and 1,395 study cards, drawn from 24 sources, mainly the OpenRN Medical Terminology 2e textbook and eCampusOntario's Building a Medical Terminology Foundation 2e.

It assumes you know no medical vocabulary at all, and it never uses a term before its parts have been taught. Here is what each unit covers, in teaching order.

Unit 1: the word-building foundation

Unit 1, Word Building Foundations (11 chapters, 228 cards), is the largest unit by a wide margin, and it is the one the rest of the course depends on.

It starts with the anatomy of a term: the prefix, the word root, the combining vowel (usually o), the combining form (root plus vowel, written cardi/o) and the suffix. Then come the rules for taking a term apart and putting one together. To define a term, you split it with slashes, define each part, and start the definition with the suffix: gastr/itis is inflammation of the stomach. A combining vowel stays before a suffix that starts with a consonant (hepat/o/megaly) and usually drops before one that starts with a vowel (hepat/itis). A prefix never takes one (intra/ven/ous).

The middle of the unit is the word parts themselves: a chapter of body-part roots, three chapters of prefixes (A to D, E to M, N to Z) and three of suffixes (A to G, H to O, P to T). The unit closes with Greek and Latin plurals (vertebra to vertebrae, bacillus to bacilli, diagnosis to diagnoses) and abbreviations, including the ones on the Joint Commission Do Not Use list and the ISMP error-prone list, such as U for unit and a trailing zero after a decimal point.

This unit is almost pure memorization. Medical prefixes, suffixes and root words groups the parts by meaning, which is easier to learn from than an alphabetical list.

Unit 2: the whole body

Unit 2, Whole Body Terminology (4 chapters, 84 cards), covers the language used to describe any location on the body: levels of organization from chemical to organism, the body cavities and the nine abdominopelvic regions and four quadrants, the four kinds of tissue membrane, and anatomical position with its paired directional terms (anterior and posterior, proximal and distal, medial and lateral) and planes (sagittal, frontal, transverse).

These terms show up everywhere afterward, and they are the same words a first responder uses to describe where an injury is. If you are heading toward EMS, EMT patient assessment step by step puts this vocabulary to work.

Units 3-7: skin, skeleton, muscle, nerves and senses

From unit 3 on, every unit is one body system, and most follow the same pattern: the system's own word parts first, then anatomy and physiology, then diseases and disorders, then tests, procedures and specialists.

• Unit 3, Integumentary System (5 chapters, 67 cards). Skin layers and glands, infections and infestations, lesions, burns, skin cancers, and skin procedures.
• Unit 4, Skeletal System (5 chapters, 89 cards). The axial and appendicular skeleton, joints, fractures, bone disease, and orthopedic procedures such as arthroscopy and arthroplasty.
• Unit 5, Muscular System (4 chapters, 66 cards). The three muscle types, how muscles are named, muscular disorders, and the -plegia paralysis terms.
• Unit 6, Nervous System (5 chapters, 87 cards). Central and peripheral nervous system, brain regions, neurological disorders, and tests like EEG and lumbar puncture.
• Unit 7, Eye and Ear (4 chapters, 67 cards). The path of light through the eye, hearing and balance, common conditions, and exams such as tonometry and audiometry.

Units 8-11: hormones, heart, blood and immunity

• Unit 8, Endocrine System (4 chapters, 65 cards). The glands and their hormones, the hyper- and hypo- disorders, and diabetes testing.
• Unit 9, Cardiovascular System (5 chapters, 86 cards). Heart layers, chambers and valves, blood flow, the conduction system, heart disease, and cardiac tests and procedures.
• Unit 10, Blood (4 chapters, 46 cards). Formed elements, the five white cell types, anemias and clotting disorders, and blood tests such as the CBC.
• Unit 11, Lymphatic and Immune Systems (4 chapters, 63 cards). Lymph and lymphatic organs, innate versus adaptive immunity, allergy and autoimmune disease, and immune procedures.

Unit 11 is where medical terminology overlaps most with a lab science course. If you are taking both, what's in Microbiology covers immunity at the mechanism level that this unit only names.

Units 12-17: breathing, digestion, kidneys, reproduction and the closing unit

• Unit 12, Respiratory System (4 chapters, 94 cards). Upper and lower airway, diseases such as COPD and pneumonia, and respiratory tests and equipment.
• Unit 13, Digestive System (5 chapters, 92 cards). The tract in order, the accessory organs, digestive diseases, and endoscopy terms like colonoscopy and EGD.
• Unit 14, Urinary System (4 chapters, 64 cards). Kidney and nephron, urinary disease, and tests such as urinalysis, BUN and GFR.
• Unit 15, Male Reproductive System (3 chapters, 43 cards).
• Unit 16, Female Reproductive System and Obstetrics (6 chapters, 88 cards). Anatomy, disorders, gynecologic procedures, pregnancy, childbirth and pregnancy complications.
• Unit 17, Oncology and Mental Health (5 chapters, 66 cards). Cancer word parts, staging and treatment, then mental health word parts, disorders and interventions.

The mental health half of unit 17 names many of the same disorders an intro psychology course explains. What's in Intro Psychology covers the psychology side.

How the cards work

Each chapter opens with a note card that teaches the topic, then mixes multiple choice, short answer, cloze and true or false cards. Two shapes carry most of the course: part to meaning (cardi/o means heart) and build or deconstruct (gastritis is gastr/itis, inflammation of the stomach). The cards are text only, with no pronunciation guides or diagrams, so pair the course with a spoken glossary if you need to say the terms aloud.

At 1,395 cards, the course is a semester-sized deck. The flashcard deck time estimator shows how long it takes at different daily new-card limits.

Where the hard parts are

Three things trip people up:

• Unit 1 volume. It is a lot of parts at once. Learning them grouped by meaning (all the "around" and "beside" prefixes together) is easier than an alphabetical run, and how to memorize a list, a table or a formula sheet has methods that fit.
• Look-alikes. Inter- and intra-, ureter and urethra, -tomy and -ectomy. One letter changes the meaning.
• Terms that don't decode. Eponyms, acronyms and words like emphysema or influenza have to be memorized whole.

Because each system unit reuses parts from unit 1, review matters more than a single pass. What spaced repetition actually does explains why short, repeated reviews hold vocabulary better than one long session, and how to learn medical terminology fast lays out a plan for the whole course.

Medical Terminology is one of several free college courses on Encodr; the full list of free gen ed course flashcards has the others. To start this one, open the Medical Terminology flashcards.