About this event
Medical Terminology is a solo written test for the Secondary and Postsecondary/Collegiate divisions, sponsored by Goodheart-Willcox. Forty-five percent of the questions test roots, prefixes, suffixes and combining forms; the rest is spread in 5 percent slices across the body as a whole and eleven body systems, from skeletal to urinary. Questions come from four references: Ehrlich's Medical Terminology for Health Professions, Taber's dictionary, Stanhope and Turnbull's Introduction to Medical Terminology, and the Dean Vaughn online course. The test is 50 multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes. Two sets of five fill-in-the-blank tiebreakers are in the booklet; they count only when scores tie and the term must be spelled correctly. New for 2026-27, the tiebreaker dropped from twenty questions to ten.
Test day
What to expect
60 minutes, 50 questions
You have 60 minutes for 50 questions written from the event's published test plan. Official format: 50-question test, 60 minutes, plus two sets of five fill-in-the-blank tiebreakers.
Written from the test plan
Questions follow the event's published test plan, section by section, and are written from the listed reference texts. Practice questions here are drawn in the same proportions.
How you advance
How many advance from regionals to states and on to the International Leadership Conference (ILC) depends on your association's rules. Study the official test plan: it lists each section and its share of the test.
What's on the test
Study resources
Bookmark to saveCurated by ChapterPrep. Free unless noted. External links open in a new tab.