The San Francisco Chronicle reports that incoming medical students at Stanford University will have fewer textbooks to carry this fall after the university distributes iPads to its 91 first-year students during orientation later this month as part of a trial program. The move by the university represents a growing interest by academic institutions to incorporate the Apple devices into the classroom and provide tech-savvy students with more modern tools. Stanford medical school officials said the pilot program is designed to improve the students’ learning experiences because the device’s portability and search capabilities will redefine the “old-fashioned” teaching practices in use by many medical programs…
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Med students’ cadaver photos under scrutiny after images show up online
In recent months, medical schools around the nation have begun re-examining their ethics codes after a string of disturbing cases in which students photographed or videotaped cadavers and posted the images on Facebook and YouTube, reports the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. Last month, Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island announced it was developing a revised ethics policy after a student posted a photo on Facebook of a classmate posing with a “thumbs up” next to a cadaver. The State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse also is updating its ethics curriculum after a former resident posted a snapshot of an exposed brain on Facebook. Students’ use of social media sites is becoming an increasing concern, according to an anonymous survey of 78 U.S. medical schools published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nearly 60 percent of schools reported catching students posting unprofessional online content, including several blatant violations of patient confidentiality. “It’s Facebook, Twitter, blogging, MySpace,” said Lauren Hughes, president of the American Medical Student Association, a Virginia-based advocacy group. “Right now, institutions are dealing with this on an individual basis.”
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