Learning Medical Terminology

by Elizabeth A. Murray, The Great Courses

Have you ever gone to the doctor and felt like medical professionals speak an entirely different language? While much of the terminology they use can feel confusing or overly complicated to the average person, the reality is that specialized fields—especially those as complex and precise as the medical sciences—require specialized language. Luckily, there are rules behind the construction of medical terms that anyone can learn to understand, no medical degree required.

In the 18 fascinating lectures of Learning Medical Terminology, your professor, Elizabeth A. Murray, PhD, will share the rules for building medical terms and how to decipher them, accompanied by anatomical graphics that bring it all to life. These guidelines will show you how prefixes, roots, and suffixes can be snapped together to create words of almost any length that contain precise medical meaning.

Dr. Murray encourages you to take notes to build your own list of terminology. You can use your notes to not only help you decipher medical terms you see in consumer publications or medical reports, but also to communicate with your own health care professionals and to better understand what they communicate to each other.

PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Genres: Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Published January 7, 2026

About the author

Dr. Elizabeth A. Murray is a forensic anthropologist and also Professor of Biology at Mount St. Joseph University, where she teaches doctoral-level human gross anatomy and undergraduate-level anatomy and physiology, as well as forensic science.

"With nearly 30 years in the field, I guess I was 'forensic' before it was cool! I find forensic science to be a fascinating subject that incorporates law, ethics, psychology, history, and technology, as it aids our global community."

Qualifications & career