On Jul 25, 1:00 am, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Matty F
saying something like:

Why do the
pros use Latin instead of Right Eye and Left Eye?

Because of the possibility of confusion - normally the convention is
from the patient's /subject's /driver's viewpoint, but who knows what
viewpoint has been used if a third party is reading it.

I don't see how having Latin for Left and Right could help in any way.
Except for having jargon so that clients just pay exorbitant fees
without question.

The hard and fast naming of a part does away with the possibility of
removing the wrong kidney, leg, eye, etc, - you'd think, anyway. Of
course, that doesn't totally avoid the chance of total cockup, as
happened here, when a surgeon removed a healthy kidney from a kid,
leaving him with the bust one. This was in spite of the mother and
somebody else spotting the error and mentioning it.

It's a common practice to write on the part concerned with a felt tip
pen. If this is not done, the patient should ask why not.
Some professionals seem to have no common sense.