Diagnosticians

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Experts equipped to evaluate patient symptoms and determine underlying health problems through systematic analysis and testing
2. Specialists who examine symptoms and test results to find out the nature of illnesses
3. Experts skilled at interpreting clinical signs and laboratory data to determine medical conditions

Etymology: Diagnosis is the older of the two parts, and it came into English from Latin "diagnōsis", which in turn was borrowed from Greek "diágnōsis". That Greek noun was built from "dia-", meaning "through" or "apart", and "gignṓskein", "to know" or "to recognise". So the root sense is closer to "discerning through" than to any notion of medicine. The Greek word was used for discernment and judgment in general, and the medical sense of identifying a disease came later. "Diagnostician" adds the English suffix "-ician" to "diagnosis", the same ending seen in "physician" and "statistician". The suffix marks a person skilled in a particular field, so a diagnostician is someone who specialises in working out what is wrong.

Synonyms: diagnosticians, specialists, experts