dc.description.abstract | Purpose: Nurses have a professional obligation to maintain patient dignity
when providing nursing care. The concept of dignity, however, is dependent on cultural context. The aim of this study was to elicit nurses’ perspectives
for maintaining patient dignity in Indonesian clinical care
settings.
Design:
A qualitative descriptive study was performed.
Methods:
A total of 40 clinical nurse participants were recruited by purposive
sampling
from
six
general
public
hospitals
in
Eastern
Java,
Indonesia,
including
six medical and six surgical units. Data were collected in 2017
using
individual face-
to-
face
semistructured interviews. Inductive content
analysis
was employed.
Findings:
The
interview
data
revealed
nurses
considered
three
main
elements
were necessary to maintain patient dignity in clinical care: personalized
care, which included prioritizing patients and treating as individuals;
compassionate
care, which included empathizing and providing emotional
support;
and patient care advocacy, which included protecting patient rights
and
being a representative for the patient.
Conclusions:
This study provided knowledge on how to maintain patient
dignity
from
the
cultural
perspective
of
clinical
nurses
in
Indonesia.
Our
findings
highlight the importance of providing dignified care in a manner
that
is congruent with culture. The nurses in our study considered
compassion
and
beneficence necessary
values for
providing dignified
patient-
centered
care, which might be qualities that are culturally sensitive for an
Indonesian
population.
Clinical
Relevance:
Strategies should be developed to improve dignity of
care
for hospitalized patients in Indonesia as well as other cultural settings,
which
could be incorporated into patient care. These should include improving
patients’
health literacy
to
increase
patient-
centered
communication,
eliminating
mixed-
gender
wards to enhance patient privacy, and involving
family
members as partners in health care. | en_US |