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- Title
NURSES' IMPOLITENESS AS AN IMPEDIMENT TO PATIENTS' RIGHTS IN SELECTED KENYAN HOSPITALS.
- Authors
Ojwang, Benson Oduor; Ogutu, Emily Atieno; Matu, Peter Maina
- Abstract
The institutionalization of patients' rights is a recent phenomenon in Kenya. In 2006, Kenya's Ministry of Health initiated policy measures to improve patient satisfaction through a charter of patients' rights. The aim was to change the longstanding public perception that nurses in public hospitals routinely ignored patients' right to respectful treatment. This paper focuses on linguistic indicators of violation or promotion of patients' rights in the health care context. We examine the extent to which patients' rights to dignity, respect, and humaneness are observed or denied, and we argue that impolite utterances impede rather than promote the realization of other fundamental human rights. It appears that nurses' impoliteness does not merely constituterudeness, but encodes a violation of dignity which, in turn, hampers the chances of enjoyment of broader human rights such as the right to autonomy, free expression, self-determination, information, personalized attention, and non-discrimination. We argue that, for patients to enjoy their rights in the hospital setting, a clear definition of roles and relationships and public education on strategies of asserting their rights without intimidation are necessary. It emerges that when patients' rights are denied, patients resort to retaliation by violating the dignity of the nurses. This jeopardizes the envisaged mutual support in the nurse-patient relationship and compromises patient satisfaction.
- Subjects
KENYA; NURSE-patient relationships; LEGAL status of patients; PATIENTS' rights; HUMAN rights; MEDICAL quality control; HOSPITAL care -- Quality control; PATIENT satisfaction
- Publication
Health & Human Rights: An International Journal, 2010, Vol 12, Issue 2, p101
- ISSN
1079-0969
- Publication type
Article