Tuesday, June 9, 2009

What about patient rights?


This is in relation to a couple of articles that have been reported in
the newspapers last week in Chennai, about 16 government health care
workers who tested positive out of 594 employees in the government
general hospital with Hepatitis in the city, which is around 2% of the
health care workers. The client load in this hospital per day is
around 10,000 patients.

I would like to point out that this hospital has never discriminated
against positive people, not that I know of.

Please read the link below:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Chennai/GH-breaks-norms-gives-hepatitis-ve-staff-names/articleshow/4581565.cms

This brought in focus was how, many health care settings are afraid to
treat 0.9% of the HIV positive people in our country while we, (any
one of us could be patients) should not worry about 2% of our health
care workers who have Hepatitis....

One of the issues raised here is relating to patient's rights in a
public/ private heath care setting:

1. How and where should patients report in case confidentiality is
breached - their details are informed to parents, family etc?

2. What should we do to ensure that we do not get any infection-
hepatitis or HIV through a health care setting? What are some of the
questions we must ask our doctor/ nurse or anyone who is conducting
any invasive procedures?

3. If we get infected by any chance, and we know that it is from the
health care setting, what is the right of the patient?

4. How can we promote patient rights? Is it possible for any
organisation/ SACS to print patient rights and ensure it is put up as
posters in hospitals?

5. What is the legal right of a patient if the doctor is refusing to
treat a patient with HIV or any other infectious disease? Who should
we approach if it is a public/ private health care setting? How can a
patient prove that there is discrimination?



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