Protecting Human Dignity in Healthcare

This opinion editorial examines the growing issue of violence against healthcare professionals stemming from patients' or families' dissatisfaction with treatment outcomes. It delves into the reasons behind this hostility, including the influence of private hospitals prioritizing profits over patient well-being and societal trends towards increased emotional outbursts. The author argues for government intervention to enforce ethical guidelines in healthcare facilities and promote a better understanding of doctors' role and limitations in ensuring patient survival.

Running Head: OPINION EDITORIAL
Opinion-Editorial: Human Dignity in Health and Human Services
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1OPINION EDITORIAL
Human Dignity in Human and Health Services: An Op-Ed
Two years ago in a hospital in Madison, Alabama, Dr. Ronald Wyatt faced an
uncomfortable situation. As he was about to attend a patient for treatment, a couple walked in to
his room and closed the door. According to them, their daughter was a patient in the hospital two
years ago, who could not survive even after treatment. The woman showed the doctor the picture
of her daughter to the doctor and asked for answers. Searching the database, Dr. Wyatt found
that the girl was really a patient and he explained to the couple that he and his team worked very
hard to save her. After some time, the couple left peacefully. However, in a later interview, Dr.
Wyatt raised an issue that although this couple left peacefully, the situation could entirely been
different if the couple suddenly turned hostile and even shoot him. Moreover, he also said that he
could not have saved himself if such a situation occurred. Dr. Wyatt’s interview raised a lot of
eyebrows and concerns grew regarding protection of human dignity in human and health
services.
From this incident above, we can naturally ask ourselves “where are we heading in
healthcare services?” It is evident from various incidents around the world that more and more
doctors in hospitals are under constant threats of violence from the patients’ families if the
patients do not survive even after treatment. The question which also arises in this regard is why
are the doctors under these constant threats (Cheraghi, Manookian & Nasrabadi, 2014). Even a
few years ago, doctors were treated like Gods and people relied on them in any health issues. In
order to find the root causes behind these, we need to look into other related factors that are also
influencing people’s opinions regarding the healthcare services.

2OPINION EDITORIAL
First of all, one cause for this hostile behavior can be the rapid growth of private hospitals
that care more about business rather than healthcare. Although these private hospitals have
modern facilities and reputed doctors, the patients have to go through a long process for
admission – like registration, form fill up, partial payment, booking of room and others. In many
emergency cases, this long process has cost the lives of the patients (Edlund et al., 2013). From
the ethical point of view, healthcare is the basic human right and denying it unless the entire
admission process is completed strips of the right as well as the dignity of the patients. Hence, it
is very much logical for patients’ families to show their anger on the hospitals.
Second reason can be the increase in extreme emotional outbursts of people that are
caused by various factors (which are out of scope of this op-ed). It has been seen that because of
the different causes, more and more people are showing strong emotional outbursts at slightest of
reasons and death of a certain patient during treatment is a major incident (Sharkey, 2014).
Whenever such an incident occurs, the patients’ families turn hostile and start showing anger and
protests against the doctors and the nurses of the hospital. There have been numerous incident
reports where the doctors and nurses were severely beaten and injured by the protests.
According to my opinion, this should never happen. The patients’ families should
understand that no doctor is practical sense will not try to save a patient or deliberately ill-treat
so that the patient dies (Matiti, 2015). It is the lack of proper administration in the hospital that
results in these incidents. In addition, in some cases, by the time the patient reaches the hospital,
the doctors have nothing to do to save him / her.
I also think that the governments should take active actions in order to address these
issues. These incidents violate human dignity and ethics for both the patients and the doctors

3OPINION EDITORIAL
whereas the hospital as a middleman earns the money from the admission payments (Manookian,
Cheraghi & Nasrabadi, 2014). Before allowing license to private hospitals, the government
should enforce certain sets of guidelines that should include immediate admission and treatment
of patient without conducting such long admission processes. This will at least reduce the
incidents of death of patient due to lack of treatment or mob attacks on the doctors due to death
of a patient.

4OPINION EDITORIAL
References
Cheraghi, M. A., Manookian, A., & Nasrabadi, A. N. (2014). Human dignity in religion-
embedded cross-cultural nursing. Nursing ethics, 21(8), 916-928.
Edlund, M., Lindwall, L., Post, I. V., & Lindström, U. Å. (2013). Concept determination of
human dignity. Nursing ethics, 20(8), 851-860.
Guo, Q., & Jacelon, C. S. (2014). An integrative review of dignity in end-of-life care. Palliative
Medicine, 28(7), 931-940.
Manookian, A., Cheraghi, M. A., & Nasrabadi, A. N. (2014). Factors influencing patients’
dignity: A qualitative study. Nursing ethics, 21(3), 323-334.
Matiti, M. R. (2015). Learning to promote patient dignity: An inter-professional approach. Nurse
education in practice, 15(2), 108-110.
Sharkey, A. (2014). Robots and human dignity: a consideration of the effects of robot care on the
dignity of older people. Ethics and Information Technology, 16(1), 63-75.