By PAUL LEVY

Here are two social media events that prove something or other.

First, a person on Facebook made the following request of a group of patient advocates:

I’m wondering if I can crowdsource a request here. For those of you who have journal article access, is anyone willing to retrieve a copy of this article from the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety? The medical library I have access to doesn’t subscribe to this journal. If you can obtain a PDF copy, please email it to me at [email] – Thanks!! More than happy to return the favor some time!

Within minutes, she posted:

That was quick! I love Facebook for this kind of thing!

In a private note to me, she said:

Journals clinging to the subscription model are easily disrupted by connected e-patients. I have often provided journal articles to countless patients and advocates and obtained them when my own library doesn’t have a journal for some reason. Don’t tell! 🙂

Meanwhile, up in Edmonton, Alberta, the Dean of the University of Alberta’s Medical School found himself in trouble for possible plagiarism:

Students publicly complained on the weekend about Dr. Philip Baker’s after-dinner speech to the graduates Friday night. They said the speech bore a strong resemblance to one given in 2010 by Dr. Atul Gawande at Stanford University in California.

Some students said they searched the speech on smartphones and were able to follow along as Baker spoke to them.

The world has become instantaneous.

Paul Levy is the former President and CEO of Beth Israel Deconess Medical Center in Boston. For the past five years he blogged about his experiences in an online journal, Running a Hospital. He now writes as an advocate for patient-centered care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes, and front-line driven process improvement at Not Running a Hospital.