Two hospital workers have been fired over a slew of patient pictures posted to MySpace. The University of New Mexico Hospital employees are accused of snapping the shots on their cell phones as the patients were being treated in the emergency room.
The hospital's director tells the Albuquerque Journal the pictures were primarily close-ups, and that the MySpace profile in question was set as private and thus only visible to the employee's online friends. The patients, he says, were not personally identifiable.
Still, in an age where medical privacy is , the move is sure to send shudders down plenty of spines. Would you want photos of your body on a stranger's MySpace page without your knowledge, particularly after you'd suffered some kind of presumably serious trauma?
Sadly, this isn't the first incident of its sort. Ten workers at Southern California's Oceanside Tri-City Hospital were fired following accusations they'd photographed unknowing patients and even patient records last year. And just this past spring, UCLA's neuropsychiatric hospital had to completely ban all cell phones and laptops after a patient posted photos of other patients on a social network.
Our 2.0-style world offers ample opportunity for sharing, but people have to realize where you draw the line. If you want to send out Twitter messages announcing your every move to the world, that's your prerogative -- but once your social networking starts invading the privacy rights of others, you've overstepped your boundary.
Choosing to share your private life with the general public is your decision. Choosing to share someone else's -- particularly in a sensitive and closely guarded medical setting -- is not.
