Employee rights in hospitals

While patients’ rights are an important element to be ensured by healthcare organizations, employees who work in hospitals are also entitled to certain rights. These rights are largely based on our constitution and legal system and apply to all employees irrespective of individual contract that they may have with the employer. Like all other legal requirements applicable to a hospital, the employing organization is also responsible to ensure that employees rights are fulfilled and protected. It is important that all employees are aware of their rights so that same can be ensured. Below is the list of employee rights.

Restraining a patient

Hospitals commonly use restraint on patients as a mean to prevent injury or harm to self or others. However, if appropriate care is not taken, restraint itself can cause serious injuries and even deaths to patients. Also, as restraint is an act of restricting an individual’s freedom of movement, generally against his/her will, it can be considered as an infringement of patient’s rights, if used without strong and valid reason. It is for these reasons, use of restraint on a patient must be guided by a comprehensive policy, that takes care of safety and rights of patients.

The guidelines given below are intended to serve as a reference for hospitals for making their policy on restraint of patients.

End-of-life care: policies and procedures for hospitals

Patients who are in their end stage of life have unique problems. While they suffer with disease symptoms and treatment side-effects they also face psycho-social, cultural and spiritual issues related to the process of dying. The family of a dying patient suffers with grief and needs help in coping with it. The emotions and sensitivities surrounding a dying patient is significantly higher than other patients. These distinctiveness of a dying patient makes it important for hospitals to understand their unique needs and develop policies and practices to fulfill their rights. Following paragraphs explains some of these needs and how can hospitals help in addressing them.

How India performed in healthcare compared to other similar nations?

Since beginning of this century a large number of policy changes and initiative has been taken in healthcare sector of India. This had led to certain changes in healthcare infrastructure and population health status of the country. During the same time most other nations of the world has also done significant work in the field of healthcare. So how did India perform in healthcare in comparison to other countries that are economically similar to India? Based on the data from World Bank’s, world development indicators and WHO’s, Global health observatory data repository, I did a study to make this comparison, which was published in a healthcare research journal. The findings from this study are interesting and worth sharing with healthcare professionals.

For the sake of brevity, I have skipped the detailed design and methodology of the study (those interested can contact me for full paper). In brief however, the comparison was done between performance of India and overall performance of ‘Lower Middle Income Economies (LMIC)’ (as India falls in this category). Along-side a comparison with neighbouring countries (Pakistan, Sri-Lanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh) was also done. The parameters compared were healthcare infrastructure and health status of the population and within each parameter a group of indicators were chosen. The timeframe used for comparison was from year 2000 to 2015. The findings and learnings from the study are as follows.