Most people use Facebook and other social networking sites to post pictures of themselves on camels or skis or out on the tiles with friends. But a Swedish nurse has taken the urge to share happy memories a little too far — by publishing snaps of brain surgery and back operations on her Facebook account.

Instead of winning admiring online comments, the nurse faces the wrath of the Swedish medical establishment. “The matter is deeply unfortunate,” Mikael Svensson, chief of neurosurgery at the Karolinska university hospital in Stockholm, said. “It violates basic ethical codes.”

An inquiry has begun at the hospital and surgical staff have been summoned to an emergency meeting to remind them of the need to respect patient privacy. The hospital says it is still considering the appropriate action — to report the nurse to police or dismiss her. The nurse, unnamed for legal reasons, has been suspended and the 14 pictures have been deleted from her Facebook profile.

Cameras are banned from operating theatres unless the pictures are specifically intended to instruct medical students. The nurse appears to have used her mobile phone to take the photographs. No faces of patients were visible.

There is a temptation to violate basic privacy rules on social networking sites because posted pictures are sometimes designed to provoke envy among friends. Glamorous photos and settings are much in favour. There was nothing glitzy about the Stockholm pictures, however — one shows an operating assistant clutching an indeterminate chunk of human flesh. The nurse — said by Expressen, a Stockholm newspaper, to be “devastated” — seems to have wanted to impress her Facebook friends with her high-powered job.

The privacy ground rules of networking sites are being refined or renegotiated by the day. A Tesco worker in Wales, manning an internet support line, noted some personal details of a customer who rang in. Then, through Facebook, he tracked her down and sent a revealing photograph of himself. The Israeli army, meanwhile, has issued instructions on the use of Facebook by its soldiers because of worries about betraying military secrets — many have posted pictures of themselves next to weaponry.

Last year, Watchdog, the BBC consumer programme, created a Facebook page — accompanied by a cartoon picture of an attractive woman in her twenties — and invited 100 random people to be her “friends”. The programme makers demonstrated how the identity of the “friends” could be stolen within hours and the details used to open an online bank account or apply for a credit card.

Medical indiscretions, though, open up a completely new area of concern because they could lead to a breakdown of trust between patients and operating staff. Although few people would be capable of identifying friends and co-workers by seeing fragments of their body organs, it could be possible to work out when the operation took place — and thus pinpoint the patient. “We are just extremely sorry about this,” said a spokesman for the Karolinska hospital.

CAUSE FOR REGRETS

* Kevin Colvin lost his job at a bank in Boston last year after taking time off for a “family emergency”. On Facebook his boss saw him pictured at a Hallowe’en party drunk and dressed as a fairy

* In February a promotion awarded to Inspector Chris Dreyfus was withdrawn by Bedfordshire Police after his Facebook page revealed details about his gay lifestyle that it deemed inappropriately graphic

* Nathan Jones and Jessica Maroclo, Pennsylvania State University students, received death threats after their photographs at a Hallowe’en party dressed as victims of the Virginia Tech shooting massacre surfaced on Facebook

* Ashley-Paul Robinson, a Crystal Palace footballer, embarrassed his club last month by posting a message on Facebook that he was having a trial with Fulham FC. The information was visible to his friends and to the site’s 2.7 million London network members

(Source: Times archives)

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