Patient Perspectives of Maintaining Dignity in Indonesian Clinical Care Settings: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

Abstract

Aim To gain an understanding towards the perspectives of hospitalized inpatients in Indonesia regarding maintaining dignity during clinical care.

Background Dignity is a basic human right that is crucial for an individual's well‐being. Respect for a person as a valuable human is a concept that is comparable to treating a person with dignity. Maintaining patient's dignity is an ethical goal of nursing care. Nevertheless, the concept is highly dependent on cultural context. This issue has not been well studied in Indonesia.

Design This study used a qualitative descriptive design.

Methods Thirty‐five participants were recruited by purposive sampling from medical to surgical wards of six public hospitals in Eastern Java, Indonesia. Data were collected in 2016 through individual face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews. Inductive content analysis was applied to the data.

Findings Four major categories which described qualities of nursing care essential for maintaining a patient's dignity in clinical care settings were revealed: (1) responsiveness; (2) respectful nurse–patient relationships; (3) caring characteristics and (4) personalized service.

Conclusions Our findings provide a cultural viewpoint of dignity for care recipients in Indonesia. The findings provide empirical support for linking dignified care and person‐centred care principles with regards to cultural sensitivity. Nurses must not only be clinically competent but also culturally competent. The ability to provide culturally competent care is important for nurses as a strategy to maintain patient dignity during hospitalized care.