Reviewer: Iris Kovar-Gough, MA, MLIS (Michigan State University Libraries)
Description: This book is a broad introduction to medical terminology organized by body system. It is structured in accordance with the genre conventions and students learn more complex terms and specialty specific contexts throughout the book. Each chapter has relevant anatomy, word parts, specialty terms, and practical applications through case studies, simulated EHR records, and a pronunciation guide. The text has copious full-color illustrations and includes clinical applications of the terminology. The associated website has quizzes, audio guides, videos, animations, and interactive skill building modules. The electronic materials are available on Evolve and could be integrated into a medical terminology course using a learning management system. The previous edition was published in 2016.
Purpose: The book's purpose is to introduce medical terminology to a wide audience - health professions students and folks in related industries such as medical underwriting and law. The book utilizes a body system-based structure and includes real-world case studies, imaging, and simulated EHR records to help users understand and apply their new knowledge to practical scenarios. The online resources complement this goal and the interactivity of the web-based materials support learning in a variety of modalities.
Audience: The book is written for an audience unfamiliar with medical terminology and would be appropriate for undergraduate students or health professions students needing to increase their knowledge of medical terminology. The text does meet the needs of that audience and starts with basic concepts leading to more complicated as the chapters progress. The emphasis on practical applications of medical terminology makes this effective. The authors are the long-standing authors of this text and have both academic and clinical experience. Their experience with learners of all types is evident in the carefully constructed and pragmatic organization of this text.
Features: Organized by body system, the book balances reading, memorization, and practice. The writing is clear and concise, and the chapters follow a familiar structure of objectives, anatomical structures, word parts, medical terms (disease and disorder, surgical, diagnostic and complementary terms), practical application such as medical case studies and use of the medical terms in an EHR, and an end-of-chapter quiz. The exercises and quizzes include definitions, term creation, matching, and translation. There is a robust variety of full-color images from anatomical diagrams to photographs of patient presentations. This level of image content is unusual in a medical terminology book and really adds to the utility of the text and helps users of all levels understand the real-world application of the medical terms. This is an approachable and effective medical terminology book.
Assessment: The previous edition was published in 2016. New to the 11th edition are clinical note-taking exercises and the addition of word part tables in each chapter to quickly orient students and teaching faculty to the new root words for that body system. Like other texts in this genre, it includes the familiar structure of teaching first roots, suffixes, and prefixes followed by combing those into medical terms. The historical context, facts, and use of a simulated EHR environment is not unique to this text but does help to situate students to the healthcare environment where they would encounter and use medical terminology. The use of case studies, aligning terms with ICD-10 diagnoses and procedure codes, and including laboratory and diagnostic imaging terms as well as substantial numbers of full-color illustrations make this a practical and effective medical terminology workbook.