Apart from the wide application of medical terminology in the medical field there is a lot of demand for the people that are working depending on this field to get to know the medical terms themselves. Medical transcription is one department where it is very important for the transcriptionist to be aware of the medical terminology. The work of the medical transcriptionist is to type out medical reports as dictated by the doctor, which will contain anything from a surgical procedure through prescription medication. If a transcriptionist is going to make a minor error it can lead to a lot of complications.

The work strategy of a medical transcriptionist is never complete without the use of medical terminology. Truly, medical terminology is the foundation stone for the medical transcriptionist. Even the most trained medical transcriptionist would need to refer the medical terminology when they are unsure about a particular work.

Referring medical terminology books is an important attribute that adds to the skill level of any medical transcriptionist. Since the transcriptionist does the typing based on contextual thinking they need to correlate the terms and dictations based on the meaning of the medical terminology dictated by the doctor.

In cases where the doctor dictates something like hypoglycemia and the transcriptionist is of the doubt that it might be hyperglycemia then if they are going to key in hyperglycemia it is a fatal error. The medication and treatment methodologies might greatly vary. Hyperglycemia is increase in blood glucose and hypoglycemia is going to be decrease in blood sugar. In cases where the patient is being taken care of by multiple doctors, the doctor that is prescribing the medication of varying the medication might take clue of the medical terminology of “hyperglycemia” in the transcription to make the prescription.

If a medication for hyperglycemia is prescribed for a hypoglycemic condition, it can even lead to coma or the patient! Such fatal assumption errors in medical terminology are avoided by timely reference habits by the transcriptionist. The transcriptionist refers the two terminologies hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia and they learn their meaning. They refer to the laboratory data and look in to the glucose level. If the glucose level is less than normal the appropriate term for it would be hypoglycemia because hypoglycemia means low level of glucose. They listen to the tape again and confirm it is hypoglycemia and key it in there, thus preventing a major treatment error or even insurance claims decline. So, understanding medical terminology is very important for a medical transcriptionist.