Today, Vietnamese physicians are directing their attention towards works on semantic relations in medical writing in Vietnamese by trying to build terminological databases using phrasal terms. Phrasal term patterns from the common language are examples of motivated form term formation and comply with terminology policy guidelines in Vietnam. The object of this paper is to examine the typology of various constructions of phrasal terms in recent Vietnamese medical terminology, to describe how medical phrasal terms can be produced by their users in Vietnamese medical literature and to show the role of phrasal term patterns in the democratisation of knowledge.