Is there a style guide for health/medical terms?

[WayUpNorthInAlaska]

I spent nearly 20 years working in newspapers, and I now work in corporate communications for a health organization. I've noticed there are many inconsistencies in the way health terms are used (eg, health care vs. healthcare in organization names; Type 2 vs. type 2 vs. type II diabetes, prediabetes vs. pre-diabetes, etc.). Is there a good style guide available for health/medical terms? I've been able to find stylebooks for sports and business section use, so hoped there might be a good health/medical stylebook. Please respond by e-mail at charles.bingham (at) searhc.org. Thanks.

[editer]

I'm pretty sure the AMA has a style guide.

[Dan Puckett]

Amazon has the AMA style guide here.

[chrisser32]

Posting for others to read, but I will e-mail directly as asked in original post.

My mother is a medical transcriptionist, so I asked her if she had a suggestion. Here's her reply.

We do have a guide in medical transcription for the language of medicine. It's a book called "Do's and Don'ts, Medical Transcription Guide" by Fordney/Diehl. The book copyright is 1990, and there have been changes in the style in my 20 years plus of medical transcribing. In my years of working in transcription, it seems that the medical professionals would like us to use less keystrokes. This is for more production, and I believe for financial reasons to keep the costs down. Most doctors pay the transcriptionist by the line, and if there is any way to shorten the lines, they would like us to do so. On their own office chart notes, many abbreviations are used, but in my work at the hospital we spell out most words. These are all legal documents and in court, a lawyer may not know all the medical abbreviations. Therefore, we have been using no hyphens (prediabetes), using more numbers than Roman numerals (type 2), and even when there is a combining word with a double letter together, we do not use a hyphen anymore (infraapical, posterooblique, etc.).