Nursing Care in British Society - Essay Example

Describe how diversity, rights and equality can be applied to nursing care in British Society In the world today, health as a fundamental human rightrecognized in the World Health Organization's Constitution stating that every human being without distinction of race, religion, and political belief, economic or social condition must enjoy the highest attainable standard of health, which is a fundamental rights of every human. Today, people from different ethnic minority groups occupy the integral part of British society. An individual is made up is his or her ethnicity and each individual is has a right to equity of treatment and services and a great work is embark opn this issue in order to move on from intolerant discussions regarding entitlement to provision of services. 'Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion... and in public or in private to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance' (WHO 1948). Ethnic minorities are defined as: '... social groups with distinctive languages, values, religions, customs, attitudes and geographical origins' (Sewell 1995). The 1976 Race Relations Act set up a legal framework for developing services for ethnic minority groups. The 1989 Children Act and the 1991 Parent's charter have followed this. All these are obliged to cater for the needs of ethnic minority groups and to ensure that services provided to the public are not racially discriminatory by the healthcare providers. Also during the last fifteen years, laws or other legal instruments respecting and protecting the rights of patients was adopted by European countries which reflect the equal and inalienable right, and at the same time it reflects the progressive recognition of the inherent dignity all potential users of the health care system. The method of implementing laws and their real content vary in different countries due to universal nature of patient's rights and that of individual rights, often depending upon prevailing cultural and social norms. Different models of the patient-physician relationship have been developed, and the particular rights to which patients are entitled to are informative. For example in North America and Europe, there is at least four models which explain this relationship: the paternalistic model, the informative model, the interpretive model, and the deliberative model. Each of these suggests different professional obligations of the physician toward the patient. For instance, the best interests of the patient as judged by the clinical expert are valued above the provision of comprehensive medical information and decision-making power to the patient in the paternalistic model, while the informative model, sees the doctor as chiefly a provider of information, and the patient as a consumer who is in the best position to judge what is in her own interest, but there is growing international consensus that all patients have a fundamental right to privacy, to the confidentiality of their medical information, to consent to or to refuse treatment, and to be informed about relevant risk to them of medical procedures. However, in promoting patient's rights and responsibilities, the development strategy has to be carefully prepared, in order to ensure that the intention is translated into practical action, which commands the support of all parties involved. These actions are not immediately followed, but take time to become fully effective. Patient's rights law is intended to secure good medical practice, but it can also serve to improve understanding between patients and medical staffs if both were aware of their rights. Nurses need to be aware of diversity to enhance patient care so that ethnic minority groups were receiving equality of treatment and service, in order to achieve these a multicultural consultation group was formed by Horton General Hospital in Banbury. The health care for ethnic minority communities takes five-year plan to be standardised in Oxfordshire and educate staff to enhance their cultural sensitivity. Taking in to considerations ware culture and religion, different ethnic group and health inequalities. At first the group is using a standard outline in Sewell's report (Sewell 1995). And later, the perspective change from focusing on ethnic minority groups as separate to seeing them as an integral part of the community the hospital served. In enhancing the patient care, some factors are embarked on to achieve their aim. Record keeping and monitoring was considered as a way of assessing ethnic minority needs formally. The aim was to record 90 per cent of episodes of contact with people from minority groups and build up ethnic group data for 1996-97. Information and communication is another factor embark on to check the problem of distinct lack of appropriate and relevant information concerning ethnic minorities for frontline workers. And this has help to address the situation, the working party discussed Red Cross folders, which outlined a method of establishing basic facts about patients' needs or conditions in a variety of languages, and then considered their usefulness in the work setting. The available information need to be expanded to include regularly updated information on the needs and requirements of people from different religious or cultural backgrounds and information about different religious practices were distributed to all wards and department, providing a key information point for frontline health workers. In this way the language barrier between staff and clients was overcoming and people from ethnic minorities to be able to communicate with health workers. Also religious and cultural needs are use to focus on four main areas that include: beliefs, diet, lifecycle events and staff gender. In the process of increasing intermixing of cultures and ethnicity, the institution need to address the wider canvas of need, sensitivity and knowledge of cultural and religious diversity, and these procedure has enabling them to give a high-quality service to clients (McIntosh and Andrews 1992). Issues guiding specific event of lifecycle and other folders containing specific information on religion and culture are distributed to educate the staff member on how to cater for cultural requirement, such as birth and death, in various cultures. Diet is often an integral part of a religion or culture. And these is made available to the client by the acknowledgement of the working party and the catering departments should provide a wide choice of meals to cater for the dietary requests of cultural groups. For example, providing Halal for Muslims and Kosher for Jewish People. Would greatly enhance patient care. Other cultural awareness on racism, training, human resources, complaint, and review should be made available for all staff to ensure an appropriate response to people from ethnic minorities. All this factors are very important and adequate knowledge and practice will enhance nurses need to be aware of diversity to enhance patient care. Awareness of patient's rights is highly important for nurses to keep a good relationship between them. Although prevailing culture and social norms determine Patients' rights in different countries and in different jurisdictions. Human dignity in international law instrumented by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, providing a legal and moral grounding in so as to improved standards of care on our basic responsibility towards each other as a member of the "human family", and giving important guidance on critical social, legal and ethical issues. But in order to clarify the relationship between human right and right to health, including patient right, a lot of thing has to be done. By recognizing this challenge, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) has designed to examine and clarifies the broader relationship between human rights and the right to health. It would be an advantage and a great step forward to ground this mission in a fundermental human right to health, which also, has great importance for the World Health Organization. Genomics and patients' right is a new approach presenting a challenge in assuring the protection of basic rights. With all the variations in local legislation and administration of patients' rights, it is important, that patients receive treatment consistent with the dignity and respect they are owed as human beings in the case of genomics, and in any other medical intervention. This means providing, at minimum, equitable access to quality medical care, ensuring patients' privacy and the confidentiality of their medical information, informing patients and obtaining their consent before employing a medical intervention, and providing a safe clinical environment. Also the rights of patients protection requires more than educating policy makers and health providers; it requires educating citizens about what they should expect from their governments and their health care providers on the kind of treatment and the respect they are owed. So that citizens can play a very important part in elevating the standard of care when their own expectations of that care are raised. Research studies has shown that medical profession is well-informed about the patient's rights but do not always respect these rights. This may be influenced by concomitant lack of knowledge and assertiveness in the patients they serve. These results suggest a need for awareness raising among patients to improve the practical implementation of the Patient's Rights Law in Lithuania thereby reducing the burden on the medical professionals in carrying the responsibility for quality assurance in health care single-handedly. Although serious concerns over patient confidentiality were aroused by the Health and Social Care Bill. Clause 66 of the Bill would have given the new Healthcare Commission wide powers in England and Wales to access records including those of individual patients. The General Medical Cansil (GMC) and partner organisations carried out a successful lobbying campaign to amend the legislation. Also the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Consumers' Association was included, it argued that patient confidentiality should be given greater weight. Following a debate in the House of Lords, it was agreed that the GMC and the Healthcare Commission would develop a robust code of practice for consideration. The GMC welcomed the opportunity to work together and ensure that the Healthcare Commission would have access to the information it needs to monitor and improve standards of care while protecting patients' rights. With regard to the enjoyment of human rights, equity without fridom is the disportism of the state. The word "equality," referred to enlargement of the life opportunities for the less privileged citizen (poverty-level/low-income group) as a whole, and the system has come to include the middle class since the system was established. Equalization act as an inverse vector that effect change in the policy under which the weight of groups target the welfare state, the middle class and the welfare society has been shifted to include all nationals internally, while limiting the target to nationals externally, has led to a situation described by T. H. Marshall (1963) as follows: "Citizenship which once promoted social equity has come to provide a base of equality on which inequality can be built" and "has itself become the builder of justified social inequality." This whole idea is base on "universality of the question" that "everybody gets old, anybody can become disabled." You have the right not to be discriminated against because of your race. This includes your national origin, colour, and ethnicity. The Race Relations Act provides protection from racial discrimination in the fields of employment, education, training, housing, and the provision of goods, facilities and services. The Act was amended in 2000 to create a powerful piece of legislation in driving forward equality. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 was enacted following the publication of the McPherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It forces the majority of public authorities to carry out a General Duty to promote, which consists of the: promotion of equality of opportunity, elimination of unlawful discriminations promotion of good race relations between different groups. And normallyunder the Race Relations Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against anyone on grounds of race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origin. All racial groups are protected from discrimination. The Race Relations Act generally applies to the fields of employment, planning, housing, theexercise ofpublic functions (both by public authorities and also private bodies exercising public functions,for example,privately-run prisons), theprovision of goods, facilities and services, education, and education. Under the Race Relations Act 1976 (RRA),the general duty is to promote race equality. There aim is to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination, to promote equality of opportunity, and to promote good race relations.the step that the public authorities may take to achieve it and what is meant by good race relationship was suggested and explained. Race equality is distinct and the three stands are interdependent. The guidance is designed, in particular, to help public authorities that are bound by the general duty. It gives examples of the types of activities that are likely to promote good race relations and help authorities to meet this part of the duty. Althouth criminal harassment and abuse to physical violence are offences under the criminal law. Inciting racial hatred is also a criminal offence. The CRE has published a protocol on referring people who appear to have incited racial hatred to the police: publishing and disseminating materials such as leaflets and newspapers that are likely to incite racial hatred is also a criminal offence. If anyone has a complaint with respect to any of these criminal matters they should be reported to the police. In order to meet the need of divers group the nurses should be aware that the right and equality must exist between them and their patients. Many public authorities have a number of specific duties to play: They include: publishing a race right and equality scheme ,assessing the impact of its policies and functions upon people of different racial groups, monitoring by racial group the recruitment and career progression of staff and the recruitment and progress of employees, publishing the results training employees on race equality issues. The nurses should show how they determines which of its functions and policies are most relevant to race equality, ensures that all groups benefit from the services they provide and are not placed at a disadvantage consults with a range of different groups, deals with complaints about they way it manages its race equality responsibilities, trains its staff in their responsibilities under the Act, publishes the results of any consultations, assessments and monitoring on race equality and right in health care. References 1. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. Verso. Translated by Takashi Shiraishi/Saya 2. Shiraishi, Sozo no Kyodotai, Libroport, 1987 Economic Planning Agency, Planning Bureau. 1993. Toward a Participatory Welfare Society 3. RCN President calls for equality of access to specialist nursing care for islanders May 26, 2003 (RCN Online, 31st December 2006) 4. General Medical Council - Protecting patients, guiding doctors - Annual Review 2003/4 5. Hiraoka, Koichi, ed. 1998. "A Comprehensive Study of the Relationship between Social Policies 6. Gilbert, N. 1983. Capitalism and the Welfare State Yale University Press. Translated by Shigeki 7. Frost E (1996), Minorities Group Minutes. Oxfordshire, Horton General Hospital. 8. MacPherson W (1999), Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London, The Stationery Office. 9. Sewell H (1995), Profile of the Pakistani Community in Oxfordshire. World Health Organization (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Geneva, United Nations General Assembly. 10. 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