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Comment by hanoz | Hacker News Reader

> At the other extreme you have the medical profession where the first thing you learn in medical school is that left/right always refer to the patient's perspective.

Didn't know that! So how pervasive is this principal? Would it apply to a descriptive reference to a diagram in a book for example?

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Yes. As a random example, you'll see that although the lungs are seen from the perspective of a doctor facing a patient, they are labelled left/right from the patient's perspective: https://www.therespiratorysystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2017...

The reason is that when a patient comes to a doctor they will say they have a pain in their left side, without further qualification. So it makes sense to center the entire terminology around that situation. Otherwise doctors would constantly be having to do error-prone conversions.

Well, that and also doctors can walk around patients they are examining, e.g. auscultation of the lungs on the back.

Doctors examine patients?

I thought they just sent them to radiology?

I think the principle is pretty pervasive also outside medicals. I do not recall anyone ever refer to my left hand as right hand (other than maybe by mistake), regardless how they are oriented around me.

After all, doctors are humans and also have a body. It would be strange for them to write books saying that the heart is [#] on the right side when they have it on their left, etc.

[%] usually, because this is HN

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