“The patient’s ears remorseless he assails; Murder with jargon where his medicine fails”. -Samuel Garth (1661 – 1719) an English Physician and poet Jargons, terminologies, argot or Lingo are specialized vocabularies, expressions and words, or a set of expressions and words used by people involved in a specialized activity or field of work. Different disciplines usually have their own jargons, e. g.
Legal jargons, scientific terms, Medical terminologies e. t. c. Even though many of each discipline’s specialized terminologies are not easily understood by an outsider, nowadays the use of these jargons are widespread and are not really restricted to members of the profession alone. In line with this and for you to be able to understand and communicate effectively wherever you find yourself in this present age, you need to be vast in all areas.
Being vast in such terminologies will give an individual a verbal advantage which is the ability to use words in a precise and powerful manner to communicate clearly, correctly and effectively in every situation on and off one’s job. Medical jargons is one of the most important terminologies that one is suppose to have a considerable knowledge in as you will definitely have something to do with the health workers and institutions during the course of your sojourn on earth.
To effectively learn these medical terminologies, the following guidelines must the strictly adhered to: Read with eyes for the words you don’t understand: As you know that reading helps to acquire knowledge, so also reading health magazines and Periodicals e. t. c. exposes an individual to vast array of medical terms. Do not rush over the material: when you read materials where you have quite a number of terms that you are not familiar with, you should not rush over them, instead take your time to brood and find out more about them.
You must understand that your rate of improvement is related less to how fast you cover the material and more to how thoroughly you study the material step by step. Never read around the terms you don’t know or you think you can figure out from the context: bypassing a medical term you think you know because you have seen it once or twice before, or because you can figure out what the sentence means is a bad habit which will not help you in your quest of learning new terms.
Know more about the term than just the definition; I must also emphasize that for you to understand and most importantly retain medical terminologies that you come across in your daily activities, you should endeavor to know more about the term than just the definition. Find out how it originated, how it is being used and any other relevant information about it. Using the term ANOREXIA as an example, it was coined in the 16th century from two Greek words: – an (without) and orexis (appetite) meaning ‘without appetite” or better still “Lack of Appetite”.