A right to an ethical consultation: a necessary patient’s right?
The law on patients’ rights of 22 August 2002 describes 7 important patients’ rights which healthcare professionals must guarantee and respect towards their patients. In 2002, the aim of the law was to recognize the patient’s autonomy or right to self-determination and to strengthen the patient’s legal position.
The clarity that this law creates in the treatment relationship between a patient and a healthcare professional, is often unclear in practice. Frequently, this legal framework turns out to be too black and white for a concrete and nuanced application in practice. At the same time, the law pays too little attention to the joint decision-making model, which is a necessary condition for the relationship of trust between a patient and a healthcare professional.
Consultation between the patient and the care professional, between care professionals and between care professionals and ethical experts is insufficiently present or almost absent in the Law on Patients’ Rights. However, this consultation is necessary to provide high-quality care and, moreover, to realize a feasible translation of the law into practice.
The question of a right to ethics and ethical consultation as a necessary patient right is in fact the question of consultation as an essential part of considering patients’ rights as a means to realize a patient-oriented, quality healthcare based on trust.
