• J Eval Clin Pract · Aug 2020

    Patient's companions as a vulnerable group in Turkish hospitals: A descriptive study.

    • Aslihan Akpinar, Muesser Özcan, and Deniz Ülker Toygar.
    • Department of History of Medicine and Ethics, Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Kocaeli, Turkey.
    • J Eval Clin Pract. 2020 Aug 1; 26 (4): 1196-1204.

    BackgroundIn Turkish hospitals, in addition to health care professionals, there are people who are also a significant part of the health care services; even though they are not professionals. In Turkey, these people are known as refakatçi (a patient's companion).ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to identify and describe the concept of the patient's companion from their own perspective and to evaluate the concept of the patient's companion in terms of biomedical ethics.MethodsThis was a descriptive study. Personal interviews were conducted via a structured questionnaire containing open-ended questions with the patients' companions. Thematic text analysis method was used to analyze the open-ended questions. The study was conducted at a University Research and Training Hospital in the Aegean Region of Turkey.ResultsA total of 118 patient companions participated in the study. These patient companions stayed with the patients because of their concerns about trusting the health care professionals in caring for the patients. During their stay, the companions encountered several problems, including staying in ward-type rooms and resting in a single armchair, as well as staying for a mean time span of 4 days, primarily for 24 consecutive hours in each day. Despite these conditions, most of the companions surprisingly declared their satisfaction with their stays.ConclusionsPatients' companions should be defined as bioethical subjects; more specifically, they should be defined as vulnerable subjects and should not be taken advantage of. The description of patient companions as a vulnerable group allows for the ethical evaluation of similar systems, such as those in Israel, Greece, Korea, and Iran, and could allow for the development of a common solution for these systems. Moreover, such a definition provides an important basis for social, ethical, or legal studies on the health care systems in all of these countries.© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…