Medical Arabic

1. Import into Anki

Getting your deck into Anki takes about a minute. Your download link is in the receipt email from Lemon Squeezy, the payment service we use. It usually arrives within a few minutes.

Deck files are large, 130 MB or more depending on the deck, so use Wi-Fi when you download on a phone or tablet.

Another way: import the deck on a computer first, then sync it to your phone with a free AnkiWeb account. Your phone still needs the Anki app: AnkiDroid on Android or AnkiMobile on iPhone and iPad. The first sync can take a while because of the audio, so wait for it to finish.

Medical Arabic by Eidetic appears in your deck list with four sub-decks: Foundation, Clinical Core, Communication and Specialties. Foundation is active, so you can start studying at once. The other three, about 1,360 cards between them, begin suspended. The next sections explain how to switch them on.

2. Recommended settings

Anki's defaults work, but these adjustments will give you better results with this deck:

• New cards per day: 5-10. A clinical term has to stay put, so a slower intake gives each one time to settle.
• Maximum reviews per day: 200. The default of 200 is fine. If your daily reviews regularly exceed 150, reduce new cards for a few days.
• Learning steps: 1m 10m. Anki's default. Leave it.

To change these: click the gear icon next to the deck name, then "Options."

3. How the card types work

Consider إسعاف (isʿāf), 'ambulance'. Recognition asks you to read it and say what it means. Production asks you to produce it from the English. Cloze removes a word from a clinical sentence and asks you to restore it.

Not every entry makes all three. All 844 entries make a Recognition card, and the rest of the 2,087 cards are Production and Cloze cards for the entries that suit them. Many entries carry a colloquial note or an MSA equivalent, and some carry a cultural note.

Feeling overwhelmed? Suspend the Production cards for the first week. Focus on Recognition and Cloze. Add Production back once your daily reviews feel manageable. To suspend: select cards in the browser, right-click, "Toggle Suspend."

4. Where to start

The deck has 20 medical themes in four sub-decks. Foundation is active. Study the others in order and switch each one on when the one before it feels comfortable: select its cards in the Anki browser and use Toggle Suspend, as described in section 3. The Quick Start PDF that comes with the deck explains it too.

• Foundation (about 730 cards, active). Medical Basics, Body Parts & Anatomy, and Symptoms & Chief Complaints. These are the words patients use to tell you where it hurts.
• Clinical Core (about 660 cards). History Taking, Physical Exam, Diseases & Common Conditions, Medications & Pharmacy, and Procedures & Informed Consent. Begin with History Taking and Medications, since you use them in every encounter.
• Communication (about 330 cards). Emergency Communication, Discharge & Follow-up, Patient Comfort & Breaking Bad News, Cultural & Religious Context, and Lab & Imaging. Study Emergency Communication early if you work in the ER, and Cultural & Religious Context early if Saudi Arabia is new to you.
• Specialties (about 370 cards). Pediatrics, OB/GYN, Mental Health Screening, Dental/ENT/Eye, MSK/Rehab, Nursing Procedures & Vitals, and Dietary & Lifestyle Counseling. Switch on the themes for the departments where you work.

Two registers, one entry

The colloquial wording that patients use is the main card. Where there is a formal wording for the chart, the entry carries it too. Three real entries show the range.

• حبوب (ḥubūb). 'Tablets, pills.' A colloquial note says the plural form is the standard one (the singular is حبة). The MSA equivalent is أقراص. The sentence is كم حبة تاخذ باليوم, 'How many tablets do you take per day?'
• إسعاف (isʿāf). 'Ambulance', in Foundation. The cultural note gives the Saudi Red Crescent number, 997, and says some people also call 911.
• دوخة (dookha). 'Dizziness', in Symptoms & Chief Complaints. The sentence is عندها دوخة لما تقوم بسرعة, 'She gets dizzy when she stands up quickly.'

Culture inside the clinical themes

Cultural and religious points are placed in the clinical entry where they come up, not saved for a separate chapter.

• Ramadan. Medicine timing and fasting come up in the medication entries.
• Prayer times. Prayer comes up around admission and surgery.
• A theme of its own. Cultural & Religious Context is a theme of its own, in the Communication sub-deck.

Five roots that unlock clinical words

Arabic builds most words from three consonants that carry the core meaning. A root you know helps you guess a word you have not met. Our terminology guide lists these.

• م-ر-ض (m-r-d), illness. مريض (marid, patient), مرض (marad, disease), ممرض (mumarrid, nurse).
• ط-ب-ب (t-b-b), healing. طبيب (tabib, doctor), طب (tibb, medicine).
• ج-ر-ح (j-r-h), wound. جراح (jarrah, surgeon), جراحة (jaraha, surgery), جرح (jurh, wound).
• ش-ف-ي (sh-f-y), cure. شفاء (shifa, recovery) and مستشفى (mustashfa, hospital), literally the place where one seeks a cure.
• ف-ح-ص (f-h-s), examine. فحص (fahs, examination), فاحص (fahis, examiner).

How a clinical exchange runs in Arabic

Phrases from our terminology guide, in the order a visit tends to go.

• Greet first. السلام عليكم, then كيف حالك؟ The opening is longer and more formulaic than in English, and skipping it feels abrupt.
• Check for allergies. عندك حساسية من شي؟ means 'Do you have an allergy to anything?'
• Give an instruction. تنفس عميق means 'Breathe deeply.'
• Discharge. خذ الدواء مرتين باليوم, 'Take the medicine twice daily', and ارجع اذا زاد الالم, 'Return if the pain increases.'

Questions from clinicians

Short answers from our Arabic medical terminology guide.

• Are modern medical terms borrowed? Many are. Antibiotics becomes antibayotik, ultrasound becomes altrasawnd and CT scan becomes si ti scan. Classical terms live alongside them, and both are used in clinics.
• Do I need to read the script? For spoken clinical Arabic, the transliteration on every card can carry you. For charts, prescriptions and records you will eventually need the script.
• Is the terminology the same across the Arab world? The formal terminology is largely shared, because it comes from Classical Arabic and international medical Latin. The colloquial layer is what varies by region. In this deck that layer is Saudi.

Pacing the clinical Arabic

A daily 5 to 10 new cards is a little over 2 to 4 new entries, because most entries make two or three cards. Foundation holds about 730 cards, so expect roughly 75 to 145 days of new cards there. If you are preparing for a posting, raise the daily number in Options when your reviews allow it, and keep the later sub-decks suspended until you need them.

Practice and reading, clinical

These pages and tools are free.

• Free browser preview. Twenty clinical Arabic cards with audio, no download needed.
• Medical Arabic for Healthcare in Saudi Arabia. Our page on this deck and who it suits.
• Arabic Medical Terminology. How Arabic roots build medical words, and the two registers.
• Medical Language Decks. Our medical decks for other languages.

The "Again" button is your friend

When Anki shows you a card and you don't know the answer, hit Again. Not "Hard." Not "Good." Again.

Spaced repetition works best when you're honest about what you don't know. Cards you mark "Again" come back sooner. Cards you know well space out further. The algorithm adjusts to you. Trust it.

Audio on every card

Every word card has professional audio. On desktop, audio plays automatically when the card appears. On mobile, tap the speaker icon.

Every entry has audio, in a male and a female voice, and here it matters because patients say these words aloud and the bedside versions are colloquial. Hear each card once before you check the transliteration, so your ear gets there before your eye does.

Lifetime updates

Your purchase includes free updates for the life of the product. When we add new cards, fix audio, or improve translations, you can re-download the latest version from Lemon Squeezy at no extra cost.

When we release a new version, it appears on your original Lemon Squeezy download link; download it again to get it.

Need help?

Reply to any Eidetic email or reach out at hello@eidetic.cards. We read everything and respond fast.