Fluorescent light diffusers are those plastic panels that cover the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling of your office or cube. The clever folks at Sky-Scapes have created some cools scenes to add a little fun and/or beauty to that space above your head.

You can get blue sky with clouds; jets streaking across the sky; ocean scenes that make it appear you are under water… or you can have your favorite Dilbert character peering down at you.

Not sure I can get approval for my office but I’ll post a photo if I do.

I spotted this lovely camo covered recliner at the local Orschlen store this morning. Aside from the inherent aesthetic value, I wonder if it is practical as well.

You come from a week of deer hunting and the last thing you want to hear the old lady bitching at you. So you sneak in –in full cammy, of course– and plop down in this baby and disappear.

“Kids, have you seen your father? I thought I heard him come in. Hmm. Guess not.”

“A nurse’s discovery of a Webcam hooked up by parents in their child’s Boston hospital room has stunned the patient’s doctor, raised a mound of privacy issues and potentially left medical staff looking over their shoulders. The unidentified parents set up the camera so the child’s favorite relative could see what was going on during the long hospital stay.”

“Dr. Deborah Peel of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation said as long as a patient isn’t recording other patients, she doesn’t see violations of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, which protects patient privacy.”

“Many people are very concerned that the quality of care in hospitals has decreased so much. I could understand the family wanting a Webcam to prove what care their family did or didn’t get,” she said.” — Boston Herald

That’s the money quote in this story.

Create all the policies you want… hire good lawyers (like Barb)… but as long as families question the quality of the care their loved ones are getting (rightly or wrongly), they’re going to be taking pictures and video. If you wind up in court, you might prevent it from being introduced as evidence, but you’ll have a hard time keeping it off YouTube.

Who’s privacy is the hospital really trying to protect?

If I was having a broken arm set and wanted Barb to video the procedure, on what grounds should the hospital prevent this? Is it okay if she watches the procedure and then opens up her laptop and blogs what she just saw?

The elephant in the room is the appearance of something to hide on the part of the facility and the staff.

Why wouldn’t you train your staff to: “take care of every patient as though what you are doing is being recorded”?

Because, like it or not, it will be.