RESPECT AND DIGNITY 6-2-16

               

                  Treating Me with Respect and Dignity,

                               While in the Hospital

Everyone has the need to be treated with dignity and respect.

The places where it is needed more, it's lacking the most.

This is, especially true of my many experiences of being a patient in the hospital. (I have serious, life threatening medical conditions that require the acute care of the hospital more than I, or anyone would like).

Doctors, nurses and many other medical personnel stabilized my medical conditions, made life better for me and, on occasions, have saved my life.

I love life and I am very grateful to everyone who’ve helped me.

Many times, as an inpatient, the hospital lack in giving me, as the patient, the respect and dignity, I, as a person deserve.

I am a competent, intelligent, capable adult and I really resent some of the all too common behaviors, practiced by hospital staff.

I Want To Tell The People In The Medical Field This:

1)   I'm not just a body, disease and/or patient.

2)   I'm a person, with just as much value and worth as people giving me care. I am not naive and really resent being treated like a child. I am an adult in my right mind, who needs and deserves to be treated like the intelligent, competent, capable adult I am.

Do not treat me like anything else, but this!

2) Common courtesy and the privacy rights of a patient is lacking, at times, by the best intention ed people.

     a) Please, whether you be a doctor, nurse, technician,, etc..,  ask “before” you examine me, touch me, touch my clothing, my 02 and my mobility device.

     b) Tell me if there is any change in my medical condition(s) and people caring for me.

     c) Please tell me of any test/procedure, before it happens.

3) Need to know is vitally important to me.

To make the right decision(s) for me, I need to know all about my health conditions. Do “not” decide for me.

The right to know my medical issues, diagnosis, problems, etc.….should not be a request! but a “demand”!

4) Privacy in my healthcare is very, very important to me. People who do not need to know my medical record, medical information, history, problems, issues, diagnosis, should “not” have access to it.

If there is one thing that I could say to my doctors is to tell me about my medical conditions, symptoms, and the reasons for some of the symptoms, I experience.

Share with me alternative treatments for my illness and its’ usual progression.

Please, tell me all other criteria pertaining to the illness in my body.

Let me decide, with your guidance and input, how I am going to live with medical conditions.

Explain to me what treatment(s), if any, I could use in treating my medical condition(s).

“Let’s Work Together, Doctor!

The truth is a lot less scary than if I guess or google my health conditions, symptoms, diagnosis, etc....

In other words, talking with me, openly and honestly, about my health conditions is the best way to treat me.

                                            Evelyn Pinto

                                           June 2, 2016