Study finds med students Tweeting patient info

% means nothing...

Percent percent percent... How many respondants took part in the survey? 10, 100, 1000?

Without factual numbers, it's just BS...

Medical students get drunk, fall over shock horror

We now return you to our regular reports of ursine defecation in silvan environments.

Online behaviour

Yes and no. I'll start off by adding that what the students are doing with confidential data is wrong, and should be punished. However, on the one hand, you have publicly-available material on your employees. On the other hand, they're entitled to their private, free time unrelated to their job - and if they choose to spend this online, in private sites, then why should the employer be allowed to be involved? Of course, the easy solution to this is:

1) use a username that doesn't relate to you, personally, on sites like YouTube. Nobody will know who you are.

2) on sites like Facebook, where most people use their real names, simply don't leave your profile open to viewing by "anybody", and don't add potential employers to your friends list!

One final issue is this one of employers actively checking up. That is wrong, and should be disallowed. What if they check my gardening club, or my basketball team, or my local Linux user group? Are they really allowed to go snooping around in my private life and interviewing my childhood friends? Hell no. They're not allowed to do it in real life and they shouldn't be allowed to do it online. As they say, "even the Queen has to use the toilet" - we're all human, and people do silly things IN THEIR OWN PRIVATE TIME, away from clients and bosses. We can't allow that to be taken away.

What? Lurid content on consumer-generated content?

<quote> 39 percent reported "depiction of intoxication and 38 percent reported "sexually suggestive material." </quote>

If you remove those two categories alone, you'd bar some 80% of YouTube content and give these 'people do the silliest things' TV shows a hard time sourcing material.

Hang on for a moment - an immediate and total ban suddenly has a LOT of appeal.

Dunno why I picked Paris; she's *never* intoxicated or sexually suggestive is she, folks?

@Jason

You moron!

So, if you start divulging company secrets, let say for example, colnel sanders secret recipie, or the magic potion they use in Frosties, in a public forum, then its OK, and the company shouldn't have a leg to stand on?

I work with patient data as part of the NHS NPFIT, I wouldn't even tell my girlfriend what i see on the system, that is called PROFESIONAL CONDUCT!!! and it's what any employer expects from its employees, and it is also what the person who has entrusted thier data to a secure body expects.

BUTS ITS OK, ITS PRIVATE TIME, HUR HUR HUR,

if it was in their private time?

Apart from the confidential / patient data, why the hell should an employer be monitoring what type of content an employee posts in their own private life? (MI5 type jobs excluded)

Same for everywhere else that operates like this. People go to work to do a job. They then go home and have a private life.

What happens in their private life is entirely up to that person, if they feel need to post a blog/twitter describing how they came out of the closet, complete with photos and a few swear words or something then that is up to them and shouldn't be subject to monitoring and approval / disapproval by big-brother employers.

Providing they're not breaking any confidentiality agreements, national secrets or whatever then who cares - it bloody well shouldn't be the employer.

@Tom 11

You moron!

Read his post again and you'll see the phrases "I'll start off by adding that what the students are doing with confidential data is wrong, and should be punished."

Colonel Sanders secret recipe, NPFIT database contents etc. fall into that category and quite rightfully should be punished if leaked. The issue here is the non-confidential, sex-life / swearing / risque type posts being made by employees. Why should these be monitored and deemed inacceptable by an employer if they aren't related in any way, shape or form to the employer or it's secrets and confidential stuff?

@Tom 11

You moron!

I have to agree with the AC above me on this one. If I sat there and posted CC data from the business I work at online I would DAMN well expect to catch more then a little heat from that. On the other hand if I post how me and my girl had the freakiest sexy in the kitchen the other night and it involved a bottle of vodka, a candle, furry handcuffs and a gimp mask, then should I expect my employer will punish me over something DONE ON MY OWN TIME!!??

Anytime and employer has the ability to say what you can and cant do, short of NDAs and confidential information and such, your running the risk of said employer making a change to their 'guidelines' so that you cant be in the NRA, or a Democrat, or gay, or using a computer at home unless we allow it and still work at that job. Think about that would ya?

OH, BTW is "Colonel" not "colnel". . .moron

Hm...

So, who cares? (apart from the leak of patient info, which is obviously very bad, etc.)

I mean, It's is not like the students started doing/saying those things with the advent of Web 2.0, is it? I'm sure the profs mentioned did all the same things but they had no mean to put it on line to the world to see, so very few people saw it at the time. The yuff is just as stupid as ever (neither more nor less), but with more powerful tools that divulge it all to the world. That goes for the patient info in a way too, of course. In the past, the students would mention that to friends and family. Now they post it to friends and family and the rest of the world to see on line.

Fail all around, but just business as usual.

STD's

How come you get in trouble when you tell your spouse you caught an STD that was going around at work ? Oh yeah, what do you do at work ?

OK, so now you take a drug test at work, and you are fired because ...