What is the Patients’ Bill of Rights?
The idea of patient’s rights saw its origin in 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formalized. This recognized the dignity of patients and their right to be treated as a human being, as well as recognizing the duty of care owed to them by medical practitioners and the state. A patient’s bill of rights is a “list of guarantees for those receiving medical care. It may take the form of a law or a non-binding declaration”.
Highlights of Nigeria’s Patients’ Bill Of Rights
Clearly Spells out Patient’s Rights: The document spells out the patient’s right to information, urgent medical intervention, secure healthcare environment, to be treated with respect and timely access to medical records which must be treated with confidentiality.
Guarantees Fair Treatment of a Nigerian Patient: Irrespective of background, religion or tribe the PBOR guarantees the fair treatment of patients and every patient can make his own medical decisions.
Drives Quality Service: The Patient’s Bill of Rights will eliminate quacks in the country’s healthcare sector, as it will serve as a weapon in the hand of the patients to demand quality healthcare service from the providers and medical practitioners.
Consumer Awareness: The bill brings a lot of awareness on patient rights, provides guidelines that can assist patients in making decisions regarding healthcare, and to support active participation in healthcare planning.
Aggregation of all the Rights for Consumers
CPC has aggregated all the patient rights in a concise manner, that gives them a clearer understanding and will be available to organization personnel, the patient, and his or her representatives as well as other organizations and the interested public. Here are the 12 rights every patient is entitled to according to the document
- Right to relevant information.
- Right to timely access to medical records.
- Right to transparent billing.
- Right to privacy.
- Right to clean healthcare environment.
- Right to be treated with respect.
- Right to receive urgent care.
- Right to reasonable visitation.
- Right to decline care.
- Right to decline or accept to participate in medical research.
- Right to quality care.
- Right to complain and express dissatisfaction regarding services received.
Here is a Downloadable PDF Version of Patients’ Bill Of Rights In Nigeria
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Click Here to Download The Official Copy Of The National Health Act 2014 (Pdf)
