Patient Privacy and Youtube

A colleague of mine sent me an email about a video making the rounds in the internet (some doctors have received the said clip through email; some have seen it in Youtube). The video features a group of Filipino surgeons, nurses and, I assume, medical students laughing boisterously during an operation to retrieve a can of body spray from a patient’s rectum. The media has made a big deal about the doctors’ behavior during the operation, but c’mon, let’s face it, trying to retrieve any foreign body from a male patient’s rectum is something to laugh about. Let’s all get down from our high horses: the boisterous laughter was a normal reaction.

Now, allowing people to videotape the operation and spread it around the net is a different thing altogether. This was a major violation of the patient’s privacy, and it should not go unpunished.

And just to correct a few people commenting on this story: patient privacy is very important even in Third World countries such as ours. Just because a few of us behave like dickheads doesn’t mean all of us are dickheads.

A suggestion to hospital administrators: do not allow any cameras or cellphones in the operating room. Unless, of course, the pictures or video to be taken will be used in a scientific manner (e.g. a case report.) The doctors who will use the images must have the patient’s informed consent.

(I purposely did not link to the video. I refuse to propagate links like that. If we medbloggers link to or embed this video, aren’t we also being unethical? We become participants in the violation of this patient’s privacy. I think doctor bloggers who have posted the video on their sites should take it down.)