Medical Specialty Terminology: Pathology, Clinical Cytology and Clinical Pathology

Abstract

Allied medical personnel need to know a considerable amount of medical terminology. With this in mind, Young and Barger have designed a book "to meet the needs of a large group of allied medical workers for a source of authoritative information on the medical terminology involved in pathology, cytopathology or cytology, and clinical pathology." The intended audience, apparently, comprises "the majority of skilled and semi-skilled allied medical workers, including nurses, nursing assistants, ward clerks, operating room and admitting or outpatient clinical personnel, medical technologists, medical secretaries, and medical records technicians..." Never have I seen a book as badly adapted to its intended audience as is this. The authors have boiled down several pathology texts, keeping all the polysyllabic words and terms, but explaining very little. Although medical practitioners would probably understand most of it, no concession whatever is made to the probable educational level of the intended readers. For example,