Physical Therapy

Physical therapy terminology
Our body has a lot of parts and when describing it to doctors and others involve in the patient care that needs a full description of a body part injured or affected, as a physical therapist, you can say, "The third finger of his left hand hurts." But it is lengthy to write and not especially exact. In medical science, specific terminologies are used. Physical therapy terminology is composed of, but not limited to, names of diseases, procedures and anatomical positions used to describe the nature of treatments. The need to know it is necessary chiefly in students taking the course. Before you can move to more difficult terminologies, knowing how to describe the different parts of the body is fundamental. For example, describing "a break in the bone of the upper arm", the proper manner to state it using medical terms would be "a fracture in the humerus" since "humerus" is the bone of the upper arm, and "fracture" is a break in the bone. Note how precise and short that is as compared to terms used in ordinary conversation. Naming the disease and describing symptoms are of no exception. They, too, have accurate terminologies in physical therapy. Using the word "arthralgia" for instance, medical professionals know that "arthro" means "joints" and the suffix "-algia" means "pain". So instead of saying "painful joints", the medically correct term would be "arthralgia". The suffix "-it is", which means "inflammation", is more familiar to most people because there are more common diseases that use it - tonsillitis (inflammation of the tonsils), arthritis (inflammation of the cartilages of the joints), etc. Doctors, including nurses, and other professionals in the medical field follow these standardized terminologies and they are understood universally. These terms facilitate understanding and better recording of assessments since few and precise words are used. Furthermore, procedures in books use the standard medical terms for describing the motion and identifying the body parts. Abduction (moving a body part away from the midline) is the opposite of adduction. Physical therapy terminologies make it much easier to describe movement. Every bone in the human body has its definite name, as well as each different muscle. Nerves are also named according to its location with the skeleton as the basis. In short, physical therapy involves bones, muscles and nerves in detail. And for that reason, physical therapists must learn these physical therapy terminologies by heart Learning the anatomical terminologies can describe the affected area comprehensively, especially when putting the patient's condition in writing before and after the physical treatment. They are standardized for the purpose of accurate, straightforward, and comprehensive recording. Physical therapy terminologies are, in a way, tools for learning and communication among medical practitioners.