Healthcare Careers
This healthcare provider evaluates, treats, and manages patients with breathing disorders, often operating mechanical ventilators in ICU settings
What is a Respiratory Therapist?
This core physiological response to perceived danger activates the sympathetic nervous system, flooding the body with adrenaline and cortisol to prepare it to face or flee a threat.
What is the Fight or Flight response?
This directional term describes a structure located closer to the point of attachment or origin on the body, opposite to the term distal.
What is Proximal?
This ubiquitous diagnostic tool, worn around a clinician's neck, uses a chest piece, diaphragm, and tubing to listen to internal bodily sounds such as heartbeats and lung crackles.
What is a Stethoscope?
This three-letter abbreviation stands for the immediate emergency response procedure performed to restore blood circulation and breathing during cardiac arrest.
What is CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation)?
This rehabilitation professional focuses specifically on helping individuals regain independence in fine motor skills and activities of daily living (ADLs).
What is an Occupational Therapist?
This diagnostic term, abbreviated PTSD, refers to a mental health condition triggered by experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event, often causing flashbacks, nightmares, and severe anxiety.
What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
In anatomical terminology, this movement describes reducing the angle between two bones or bending a joint.
What is Flexion?
This portable device, often found in public spaces and emergency response kits, analyzes heart rhythms and delivers an electric shock to restore a normal rhythm during sudden cardiac arrest.
What is an Automated External Defibrillator (or AED)?
This Latin abbreviation is used in medical settings to indicate that an order or action must be completed immediately.
What is STAT?
This surgical team member ensures patient safety by administering drugs to prevent pain and monitoring vital signs throughout invasive procedures.
What is a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist?
This anatomical region of the brain, shaped like an almond, acts as the body's alarm system by processing emotion and threat perception during traumatic experiences.
What is the Amygdala?
This common prefix, added to the beginning of a medical term, indicates "high," "above," or "excessive."
What is Hyper-?
This diagnostic imaging machine uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves—rather than ionizing radiation—to generate detailed cross-sectional images of soft tissues and organs.
What is an MRI machine (or Magnetic Resonance Imaging)?
This common prescription abbreviation stands for "as needed", instructing patients to take medication only when symptoms occur.
What is PRN?
This licensed practitioner has advanced nursing education, allowing them to diagnose illnesses, prescribe medication, and order lab tests own their own in many states.
What is a Nurse Practitioner?
This state of constant, heightened alertness keeps the nervous system on high alert, causing a person to perpetually scan their environment for potential threats or danger.
What is Hypervigilance?
This anatomical term describes a movement that draws a limb or digit away from the midline of the body.
What is Abduction?
This non-invasive clip, usually placed on a patient's fingertip, uses light wavelengths to measure the oxygen saturation level of arterial hemoglobin.
What is a Pulse Oximeter?
This abbreviation refers to a sudden, life-threatening situation where a patient's breathing or heartbeat stops, triggering an urgent hospital-wide emergency call.
What is Code Blue (or CPA - Cardiopulmonary Arrest)?
This professional specialized in pathology analyzes bodily fluids and tissues in laboratories, providing data critical for diagnosis without direct patient care.
What is a Medical Laboratory Specialist?
This clinical term describes an involuntay defense mechanism where a person temporarily detaches from their surroundings, memories, or identity during or after an overwhelming event.
What is Dissociation?
This prefix means "fast" or "rapid," commonly used to describe an abnormally high heart rate or breathing rate.
What is Tachy-?
This flexible, lighted tube equipped with a camera allows clinicians to visually inspect internal organs and cavities, such as the gastrointestinal tract or airways, without major surgery.
What is an Endoscope?
Found on pharmacy orders, this abbreviation stands for nothing by mouth, indicating a patient cannot eat or drink.
What is NPO?