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Five Do Not Use abbreviations, spelled out: the answers US medical assistants sitting the CMA (AAMA) exam must write on every order.
- U or u → the word unit, spelled out
- IU → International Unit, spelled out
- Q.D. or QD → daily, spelled out
- Q.O.D. or QOD → every other day, spelled out
- MS, MSO4 or MgSO4 → morphine sulfate or magnesium sulfate
Medical terminology is where many medical assistant students lose easy points. It is not hard material, but it is wide: a first course throws hundreds of word parts at you, and the CMA (AAMA) exam lists medical terminology in the General section of its content outline. If you fail the exam, AAMA charges the fee again for every attempt: $125 for AAMA members and $250 for nonmembers.
I built a 128-card Anki deck for exactly that. It is split into 9 subdecks: 15 prefixes, 15 suffixes, six body-system groups of 14 cards each (cardiovascular and blood, respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal and skin, nervous-endocrine-sensory, urinary and reproductive), and 14 cards on abbreviations and The Joint Commission Official Do Not Use list. I counted every number here from the built .apkg file: 128 notes, 3 fields each, 9 subdecks.
Why word parts first? Because they multiply. Once you know that hyster/o means uterus and -ectomy means surgical removal, hysterectomy needs no card of its own. The same -ectomy then decodes cholecystectomy, as long as you also know cholecyst/o is the gallbladder. That is why every card in the deck carries a hint with the parts, such as hem/o + -ptysis for hemoptysis (coughing up blood) or dys- + -phagia for dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). You learn a small system, not 128 unrelated words.
Why these five? U for unit can be read as 0, 4 or cc. IU can be read as IV or 10. Q.D. and Q.O.D. get confused with each other. MS, MSO4 and MgSO4 can mean either morphine sulfate or magnesium sulfate. The other two cards on The Joint Commission Official Do Not Use list are about zeros: a trailing zero, as in 5.0 mg, can turn into 50 mg if the decimal point is missed, so you write 5 mg; a missing leading zero, as in .5 mg, can turn into 5 mg, so you write 0.5 mg. Seven cards cover that list, and seven more cover everyday orders and charting abbreviations such as NPO, PRN, b.i.d., t.i.d., STAT, SOB and HTN. It is the subdeck students skip and working MAs get corrected on.
You can try the method before you pay for anything. The free page has the first 12 prefix cards: brady-, tachy-, hyper-, hypo-, dys-, a-/an-, peri-, endo-, epi-, inter-, intra- and poly-. The first card opens already answered. Mark each one Got it or Missed and the score line shows how many you know and names the ones you missed. Those 12 cards are also available as a small .apkg if you want to see how the deck looks inside Anki.
What the free page cannot do is remember. Close the tab and your misses are gone. The full deck puts all 128 cards into Anki, where spaced repetition schedules each card you press Again on to come back sooner and each card you know to come back later. A simple plan is to set New cards per day to 15 and open one subdeck a day. After nine days every card is in rotation, and the daily review queue is the list of terms you still need before your exam date.
Installing takes two steps. Back up your collection first (recent Anki versions have File > Create Backup; menu names differ by version and language). Then use File > Import and choose the .apkg, or just double-click the file. Press Study Now and each body system appears as its own subdeck.
The full deck is a single payment, not a subscription. Drill the free 12 first, and only buy the rest if the card style suits how you study.
15 seconds — what it actually does
Questions people ask
What does this medical terminology Anki deck do?
It is an Anki deck of 121 flashcards in 8 subdecks for the AAPC CPC exam: word building, prefixes, procedure suffixes tied to CPT surgery headings, pathology suffixes, anatomical planes, body-system roots, and ICD-10-CM/CPT conventions such as Excludes1, injury 7th characters and modifiers 25, 50, 59 and 26. Anki schedules the reviews for you.
Who is this deck for?
US medical coding students taking the AAPC CPC exam, and coders moving into CPC from billing or nursing. If a failed attempt would cost you the $425 exam fee again (AAPC core exam, 1 attempt), this deck drills the terms that every coding question is written in.
Why not use a free medical terminology deck?
Free medical terminology decks are built for nursing and anatomy classes. They teach vocabulary, but none of them tie -ectomy, -otomy and -plasty to the CPT surgery headings you search on the exam, or put Excludes1, NEC, NOS and the A, D, S 7th characters in the same deck.
What is free?
The first section, Word Building Basics, is free as a working Anki deck of 12 cards, and the page has a term decoder: type cholecystectomy or any term and it splits into prefix, root and suffix with the meaning of each part. The paid deck adds 7 more subdecks, 109 more cards. It is a one-time payment, not a subscription.
How does the cost compare?
AAPC exam prep training starts at $2,799, and the CPC exam is $425 for 1 attempt or $499 for 2 attempts (aapc.com, checked 2026-09-28). This deck costs $50 once. It does not replace a course; it drills the terminology layer so you do not lose points on reading.
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