The aim of this study was to identify the difficulties in understanding English medical terminology within the context of clinical training and to analyze the educational practices influencing its acquisition by students. At the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina,” a content analysis of educational materials, observation of clinical simulations, and a comparative study of terminology policy in Kosovo and English-speaking countries were conducted to examine the morphemic structure, semantics, and practical use of English medical terminology. The results revealed that most difficulties in acquiring terms are associated with morphological complexity, eponymic opacity, and metaphorical load, which do not correspond to students’ level of language training. Linguistic analysis showed that Greco-Latin morphemes and affixal and compound structures combining multiple thematic elements within a single term are dominant. The least transparent for interpretation were eponymous and metaphorical constructions, which require separate contextual explanation. The comparative analysis demonstrated that in the US and the UK, English medical terminology is standardized and integrated into educational and clinical systems through international classifiers, whereas in Kosovo it is fragmented, with 83% of courses not referencing digital platforms. The analysis of educational materials at the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina” showed that only 21.4% of courses include terminology training, and 68% of lecture-based courses are fragmented. During clinical simulations, students avoided complex vocabulary in 58% of cases or substituted it with descriptive constructions.
Mehdiu et al. (2026) studied this question.