Nurses' impoliteness as an impediment to patients' rights in selected Kenyan hospitals
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Date
2010
Authors
Ogutu, E.A.
Ojwang, B.O.
Matu, P. M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Harvard School of Public Health
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 constitute
rudeness, 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.
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Citation
Health & Human Rights: An International Journal;2010, Vol. 12 Issue 2, p101