Glossary
Medical Appliance Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential medical appliance technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key medical appliance technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in medical appliance technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ABC
- Certification board.
- Carbon fiber
- Strong lightweight material.
- Fitting
- Trying on a device.
- Lamination
- Layered resin construction.
- Orthosis
- Brace.
- Padding
- Comfort layers.
- Polypropylene
- Common brace plastic.
- Positive model
- Plaster copy of a limb.
- Prosthesis
- Artificial limb.
- Pylon
- Prosthetic shank.
- Socket
- Part fitting the limb.
- Thermoforming
- Shaping heated plastic.
- Trim lines
- Edges of a device.
- Vacuum former
- Shapes plastic over models.
- Work order
- Fabrication instructions.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Medical Appliance Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Medical Appliance Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.