If you've chosen podiatry as your career, 2 things:
1) Yay! Welcome to the dark side! *cue evil laughter*
2) You're going to want to familiarize yourself with a few (a lot) of terms I'm going to mention below and trust me, this will help immensely.
As any healthcare student, the most important terminology you want to memorize is anatomical terminology, because it will be substituted for your common vocabulary and if its not embedded into your brain you'll end up crying after each clinic lecture like someone I know.... (okay fine I'm the cry baby.. moving on)
Gross anatomy is the study of body parts that are visible to the naked eye and this is very handy since we use anatomical terminology in our patient files to describe what problem we see and where we see the problem. (It'll make sense later, hopefully!)
Microscopic anatomy is anatomy on a microscopic level allowing to study cells (cytology) and tissues (histology) both topics will be covered in podiatry.
Other branches of anatomy include developmental anatomy (study of human growth and development) and pathological anatomy (study of diseased body structures)
Physiology is the science of the functions of the living organism and its part, for podiatry students knowing your cellular physiology, cardiovascular physiology, respiratory physiology and neurophysiology is crucial before moving onto the following years.
Body cavities: your organs are compartmentalized into areas called cavities. As well organs your body cavity holds other structures and fluid (its gross, don't ask)
Dorsal Body Cavities are in the back part of the body and contain the cranial and spinal cavity.
Ventral Body Cavities are on the front side and contain the: thoracic cavity, pleural cavities, mediastinum, diaphram, abdominal cavity, abdominopelvic cavity and pelvic cavity.
Directions and planes of the body come in very handy!
Sagittal: a lengthwise plane that runs from front to back, it divides the body into left and right.
Frontal/Coronal: a lengthwise plane that runs from side to side that divides the body into anterior (front) and posterior (back) portions.
Transverse: a crosswise plane that divides the body into upper (superior) and lower (inferior) parts.
Proximal: closer to the point of attachment to the torso
Distal: away from the point of attachment to the torso
Medial: closer to the center of the body line
Lateral: away from the center of the body line
Dorsal: top
Plantar: bottom
Right! glad we got that out of the way.. but there's more to cover kiddo, so I'll have to give you the rest of that information next time!
Until then.. go take that walk! but... not the 260 mile walk (looking at you Dominic!)
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