Online Medical Terminology Course
by William J. Dyche, PhD; Donald Matz, PhD · Des Moines University Medicine and Health Sciences
A free 15-module self-paced course opening with word roots, prefixes, and suffixes before covering fourteen body systems. Includes roughly 1,400 flashcards, matching exercises, and case studies; finishers can construct terms and read medical records.
More resources on Medical Terminology
The Language of Medicine (13th Edition)
A 22-chapter textbook that introduces terms alongside the anatomy and physiology they describe instead of as isolated lists. Exercises, lab reports, and clinical scenarios build the word-building habit; standard assignment in allied-health and nursing programs.
Medical Terminology I (Rice University)
First of three Rice University courses, about fifteen hours, taught by physical therapist Laura Kabiri. Covers word parts, SOAP note structure, and integumentary, musculoskeletal, and urinary terms; students practice extracting meaning from electronic health records.
Medical Terminology 2e (OpenRN)
An openly licensed textbook, seventeen chapters long, that applies word-part analysis to every body system plus obstetrics. Readers finish able to decode diagnostic, surgical, therapeutic, and symptomatic terms and the abbreviations attached to them.
Understanding Medical Words: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine
A 25-page interactive tutorial from the US National Library of Medicine on how prefixes, roots, and suffixes combine. After the lessons and quizzes, a reader can split unfamiliar clinical terms into parts and infer meaning.