The aim of this phenomenological research study carried out in Iran was to capture the meaning of patients' rights from the lived experiences of patients and their companions. To achieve this, 12 semistructured interviews were conducted during 2005 in a teaching hospital in Tehran with patients and/or their companions. In addition, extensive field notes were compiled during the interviews. The data were analyzed using Benner's thematic analysis. The themes captured were classified into three main categories, with certain themes identified within (...) each category. The categories were: (1) the concept of patients' rights; (2) barriers to patients' rights; and (3) facilitators of patients' rights. The distinctive themes within each of the categories were identified as: (1a) receiving real care, (1b) focus on the patient, and (1c) equality and accessibility; (2a) dissatisfaction with caregivers, and (2b) specific work environment limitations; (3a) the patient's companion, (3b) a responsible system, and (3c) the public's awareness of rights. Although certain themes identified closely resemble those identified in international patients' bills of rights, the current study focused on themes that are particularly relevant to the Iranian sociocultural context. (shrink)

Among Japanese nurses ethics is perceived as being distant and unrelated to their practice, although this is filled with ethical concerns and the making of ethical decisions. The reasons for this dissociation are the primacy of western values in modern Japanese health care systems and the suppression of Japanese nurses’ indigenous ethical values because of domination by western ethics. A hermeneutic study was conducted to listen to the ethical voices of Japanese nurses. Seven ethical concerns were revealed. Although some of (...) these concerns may seem to share similar values with western ethical principles, the basis for the concerns was unique and rooted in the Japanese cultural value system. The meanings of each concern are explicated in conjunction with related background meanings. Listening and trying to understand these nurses’ voices in their own context suggests a way of bridging the gap between abstract and universal ethics and practical and local ethics. (shrink)

In this analysis I apply a Foucauldian approach to ethics to examine the politically prescribed moral and ethical character required of carers of aged persons at home in Australia and the role of nurses in shaping these behaviours. The work that spousal carers provide, although often founded on love and/or obligation, has been formalized through a variety of policy initiatives and technologies that serve to construct the moral approach they must adopt. This shaping of conduct at the most personal level (...) takes place through the application of codes of behaviour policed largely by nurses. These codes redefine the mode of coexistence between an aged husband and wife and propose a new form of relationship that is derived from and supports policies of the deinstitutionalization of care services for elderly persons. In this way modern carer policy has drawn on knowledge and governance of the self to produce a morality of caring that is both authoritative and scientific. (shrink)