Medical Terminology BDNT 1203

Course description:

This course is an introductory course to the terms used in dentistry and health care. Knowledge of these terms, and how to decipher unfamiliar medical terms, will be beneficial in students communications with medical professionals and their studies of dentistryand medical issues. The topics cover each of the body systems, having illustrative graphics and a short description of each system with the terms used to describe that system. The course studies prefixes, suffixes, and root words of medical terms and their meaning, spelling, and pronunciation. Emphasis on building a working medical vocabulary based on body systems.

Course Aims:

This course aims to provide students with a solid, basic overview of terminology used in the medical, health, dentistry and biological sciences fields. This course aims to encourage the acquisition of general scientific skills relating to the systematic assembly, critical analysis, interpretation and discussion of factual information and data.

Course outcomes:

After completion of this course students should be able to:
  • Divide, analyze, and define complex medical words by recognizing their components: prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and root words. 
  • Build basic medical words using prefixes, suffixes, root words, and combining forms and apply to body systems. 
  • Correctly use, spell, and pronounce medical terms, demonstrating awareness of meaning of medical homonyms and sound-alike terms. 
  • Correctly use abbreviations, acronyms, eponyms, antonyms, synonyms, and commonly used foreign words and phrases.