Medical terminology is as a specific language utilized by healthcare personnel to describe the components of a body, illnesses, and medical interventions. The basis of medical terminology is the Latin language, and in some cases, these words have little or nothing in common with the modern English words. Nurses, physicians, and narrowly focused specialists use medical terminology in practice to accurately chart a patient.
The first reason why medical terminology is needed to chart a patient properly is that it is a common language understood by all healthcare professionals. In other words, the application of medical terminology allows them to economize time and raise the effectiveness of their communication because they can describe a patients diagnosis with only one word or a phrase. However, at this point, it should be noted that medical terminology should be used only when a doctor communicates with another specialist, not a patient (Derevianchenko et al., 2018). For example, if a physician asks patients how often they suffer from cephalgia, they are likely to be confused because they might have never heard this word before.
The second reason for the essential role of medical terminology in charting is that it is a way to escape medical errors. From one point of view, medical terminology is one of the reasons why medical errors occur. Some hospital staff members might misunderstand what is written or be completely unaware of what it means. Nonetheless, medical terminology is an effective way to describe a condition of a patient to escape misinterpretations of a diagnosis. For this reason, it is necessary to train nurses and doctors to understand medical terminology and promote its usage in everyday practice.
To summarize the aforementioned arguments, accurate charting of a patient is impossible without the application of medical terminology. It optimizes the efficiency of communication between healthcare staff members. Besides, it minimizes the probability of a medical error related to the misinterpretation of a diagnosis by the specialists. For the reasons mentioned above, it is necessary for nurses and doctors to be fluent in medical terminology.
References
Derevianchenko, N., Lytovska, O., Diurba, D., & Leshchyna, I. (2018). Impact of medical terminology on patients’ comprehension of healthcare. Georgian Med News, 284, 159-163.