Subscribe by EmailNurse suspended for brain surgery Facebook photos
August 19, 2008 by Mark O'Neill |By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Just when you thought the Facebook craziness couldn’t get any crazier, the hits just keep on coming!
A Swedish nurse has been suspended from her job after she used the camera from her mobile phone to take pictures of a brain surgery operation she was participating in. She then posted the pictures to her Facebook account.
She was apparently trying to impress her Facebook friends with her cool job - “look I’m staring straight at someone’s brain! That beats you flipping burgers any day of the week!”
Needless to say, the hospital where she worked totally flipped out and suspended her. The photos have apparently been removed from the Facebook account and she is said to be “devastated”.
“Devastated”? How did she think this scenario was going to play out? With a big fat promotion and pay raise? Plus the surgeons who stood there and watched her take the pictures should be disciplined too - and that doesn’t even begin to address the lawsuit possibilities when the patient finds out that his brain was on a social network!
and this is me on Facebook…..helping with brain surgery - Times Online
[Picture Source: Flickr]
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This is your brain. This is your brain on Facebook. Any questions?
The article states “No faces of patients were visible.” If privacy was preserved and no physical harm done … who exactly was harmed by this?
Aside from the nurse losing her job…
Okay, explain this to me. Everyone is up in brains about an anonymous picture of a brain.
Was it the person’s private parts? Was it something that identified the patient in any way? Could you possibly LOOK at the brain and say, “Damn, why did they have to show Jimmy?”
No, it was a brain. A BRAIN!!! I can understand in this day and age of overzealous litigation that they did what they did, but honestly, can we please all take a chill and NOT equate this with someone taking pictures during something even LESS anonymous than a brain operation. It’s not like you can see anything in the brain that is “oh my gods” personal.
I think we all just need to start being a little less PC.
I think y’all are missing the point.
Think of all the filthy things you touch during the day.
Think of your germy fingers touching your phone.
Think of your germy phone flailing about in a surgical theater with your brain exposed.
Think of how the surgical team scrubs up, puts on sterile overgarments, gloves, masks, hats, and even protective eyewear.
Think of all the utensils being either wrapped in sterile packaging from the manufacturer or sterilized in an autoclave.
Do you really think she sterilized her phone in the autoclave or scrubbed it down with antiseptic cleanser before taking it into the surgical theater.
I say she should be fired, if not for privacy violation — does Sweden have a version of HIPPAA? — then for sanitary violations.