I saw a news story recently here, about a young nursing student in Kansas who posted a picture of herself holding up a placenta in one of her classes to Facebook. Her community college expelled her, months before her upcoming graduation.
I was surprised that the community college took such swift and harsh action against her. Especially since the girls involved asked their teacher if it was alright first. And how did the school officials even know about it? It's not like they would be Facebook friends with that student. Maybe the lab teacher mentioned it to the department head or something.
I read through some of the comments by the public about this story and some folks were really offended that the picture was posted, said it was a violation of HIPAA privacy and all -- but a placenta, unless it has ID tags on it in the photo, wouldn't be identifiable as one person's placenta.
I think I might have some learning to do about health privacy laws, what is okay to do as a health professional and what is not. I know my dad was once asked by a group of doctors if they could take a picture of his geographic tongue, and he refused for some reason. I'm sure permission of the patient would be required if you wanted to use the photograph in a medical publication or something. I think I've signed papers to that effect before. But a facebook snapshot of an anonymous placenta?
I'll be following this story for sure...
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