How to Understand Patient Rights

Patients have rights as to what gets done for them in a health care setting. You will learn about Ethics and laws, abuse, neglect, domestic violence, workplace violence, negligence, confidentiality, and invasion of privacy in this lesson.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Nursing care book
• Internet

1. Legal and ethical behavior. Ethics and laws guide our behavior. Ethics is the knowledge or right and wrong. Laws and ethics protect people receiving care and guide people giving care. Examples of legal and ethical behavior are being honest at all times, protecting patients privacy, never becoming personally involved, reporting abuse and or suspected abuse, never performing unassigned tasks, reporting all patient observations and incidents, documenting accurately and on time, and to follow standard precautions.
2. Patients rights relate to how residents must be treated while living in a health care facility. They follow an ethical code of conduct for health care workers.
3. Abuse means purposely causing physical, mental, or emotional pain or injury to someone. Shoving a patient is an example of physical abuse. Purposely embarrassing a patient is an example of emotional or psychological abuse.
4. Neglect means failing to provide needed care. Deliberately ignoring a patient is an example of neglect.
5. Domestic violence is abuse by spouses or intimate partners. It can be physical, sexual, or emotional. the victim of the abuse can be a woman, man, elderly person, or a child.
6. workplace violence is abuse by an employee or a patient. It can be verbal, physical, or sexual. This includes inappropriate touching and any discussions about sexual subjects.
7. Negligence means the failure to provide the proper care for a patient that result in unintended injury. An example might be that you did not notice that a patient's dentures fit properly, and therefore the patient is not eating well, or you forgot to lock a patient's wheelchair before transfer her. She falls and is injured.
8. confidentiality means keeping private things private.
9. Invasion of privacy is a legal term that means violating someone's right to privacy by exposing her or her private affairs, name, or photograph to the public without that person's consent. You do not talk about patient's outside the nursing care facility. That is a definite NoNo! You never now who is listening. You only talk to your supervisor or another member of the health care team about a patient. You cannot talk to a visitor about patient.