hey everybody dr. Oh here in this video we're going to cover the anatomical position and directional terminology so first what is the anatomical position unless you're told otherwise you have to assume your patient is is in the anatomical position when we're describing locations of the different structures so the anatomical anatomical position is someone standing up standing erect with their feet forward the palms of their hands forward and their eyes forward just like this lady is so that's the anatomical position if she was resting her arms at her side like you normally would that would be called a functional position that's gonna be used a little bit more in kinesiology so that's the end of anatomical position before we jump into the individual terms I just want to kind of explain the rules number one you see the left and the right there above her head so it's always the patient's left and the patient's right that can be confusing when you're looking at an image the right side of the page is going to be the left side of their body so always keep that in mind it's the patient's left patients right whether you're talking about directional terms where blood vessels are etc so that's rule number one rule number two directional terms don't mean anything in isolation so a directional term is always something in relation to something else so if I were to say that my elbow is inferior that doesn't tell me anything because inferior to what my elbow is inferior to my shoulder most of the time but it's superior to my wrist so remember directional terms are going to tie two locations together alright so those are the rules let's go ahead and jump in and cover some of the terminology here then let's go ahead and start with the front and the back so there are two ways to describe that we have anterior versus posterior and we have ventral versus dorsal so anterior means towards the front and posterior means towards the back pretty straightforward but in a human in a bipedal animal like a human ventral and dorsal mean the same thing because ventral actually means towards the belly and our belly is on our front and dorsal means towards the back think about like a dorsal fin on a shark or a dolphin so dorsal is gonna mean towards the back so ventral and anterior mean the same thing a dorsal and postie remain the same thing but that's only in humans now if you were taking a class where you're learning about four-legged animals their belly would be towards the bottom right so that wouldn't correct but ventral and anterior towards the front dorsal and posterior towards the back now let's go up and down so first we have superior which means towards the top and in favorites mean which means towards the bottom so those words work just fine but you're gonna see on here as well cranial versus caudal so cranial means towards the skull which is obviously on the top and caudal means towards the tail so you'll actually see the term caudal again learning about the nervous system the cauda equina or horse's tail is the long nerves that dangle below the spinal cord so caudal means towards the tail I do want to add one more term here another term that means towards the top would be cephalic so cephalic means towards the head which is obviously on the top so cranial cephalic and superior all mean towards the top and caudal and inferior mean towards the bottom all right so that's cranial vs. caudal and then we have our front and back next let's do medial and lateral so medial means towards the middle towards the midline lateral means away from the midline so that those are pretty straight forward and the next on here we have proximal versus distal this is a very important one because this is the best term the first term you should use anytime you're describing a limb because proximal means towards the trunk closest to the trunk and distal means further away from the trunk the reason that's such an important terms is because they're always correct if I were to say that the elbow is distal to the shoulder that's always right but if I were to say the elbow is inferior to the shoulder it's not always right standing in this position is true but if I raise my hand over my head now my elbow is superior to the shoulder so whenever you're you're describing limbs think proximal and distal first alright so those are most of the critically important directional terms have a couple more terms I want to add here though and that would be superficial versus deep so superficial means towards the surface distal means further away from the surface so pretty straightforward if you're looking about structures like your skin would be very superficial compared to your colon would would be deeper so the more layers you have to travel through to get something to get to something the deeper it is and then two more really important terms and that would be prone versus supine so if you take this person that's standing up and you lay them down if they're laying they're back there supine if they're laying on their belly their stomach they're prone so what I think about just remember when you're supine you're on your spine that's the simplest way to remember it you're laying on your back you're supine and then for me when I think a prone I always think about the cool little green army man I played with when I was in a kit when I was a kid and when they're prone they were crawling on their bellies but whether that works for you I can't say all right so that is the anatomical position and those are your key directional terms I hope this video is super helpful have a wonderful day be blessed