Step 1: Read the Discussion Background:

You’re working as a scheduler for a busy multi-physician practice. Today a patient called to schedule an appointment to have the doctor check on her eczema because she noticed it was spreading up her arm and the area is red and swollen. You set an appointment for the patient to see the family practice physician in the office.

Two days later the office manager contacts you and explains that the patient’s condition of eczema is a skin disease. She also tells you that you need to call the patient and reschedule the appointment with the dermatologist that practices in the office.

Step 2: Create a new thread and answer all three parts of the initial prompt below:

Explain how knowledge of medical terminology would have helped with scheduling the appointment the first time.
Describe another example, other than scheduling patient appointments, when a healthcare professional would need to understand medical terminology.
Describe one potential negative effect for patients when healthcare professionals don’t understand and correctly apply knowledge of medical terminology.

1- Having knowledge of medical terminology would have wasted the patient's and the doctors time and energy. This could have easily led to severity or a misdiagnosis of disease due to time lost due to appointment to the wrong specialist.

2- While going into a hospital, a patient describes his emergency situation to the receiver. The health care official is unaware of the medical terms and gives urgent temporary treatment to delay the worsening. This can easily be misinterpreted of what patient explained which can further lead to worsening the situation.

3- When health care representative do not understand medical terminology, they can easily mistreat a patient due to lack of understanding which can lead to severity of disease.