9.5. Healthcare institutions
has been provided. The absence of the patient’s information and the lack of
the patient admission request form (signed by at least the guardian) cause
an impropriety in relation to the right to human dignity proclaimed in Article
II of the Fundamental Law.
Some patients complained that they were not getting sufficient quantities of food. The staff was familiar with this issue as a 2017 internal audit report had already concluded that the food provided by the hospital
was insufficient. The members of the staff remarked that the patients of
the psychiatric ward could barely ever count on getting supplementary
food from their relatives. The patients’ sense of hunger is aggravated
by the fact that meals are distributed only three times a day, and morning snacks and afternoon snacks are handed out together with the main
meals. Psychiatric patients may feel confused, and disoriented in time,
thus they cannot be expected to ration the food they have received. If patients with a psychiatric condition are also affected by diabetes, the fact
that food is distributed to them three times a day poses a danger also for
their state of health.
It is dubious whether patients can enforce their right to complain if the
patients’ rights representative does not regularly go to see the patients of
the department that the patients themselves are not allowed to leave.
In relation to the conclusions of the visit, I made 14 recommendations.
I asked the Minister of Human Capacities to consider that the patients’
rights representative be obliged to hold consulting hours at regular intervals in departments providing in-patient care that patients may not
leave at their will. With a view to that, I proposed supplementing Section
9(1) of Government Decree 381/
2016. (XII. 2.) Korm. on the Integrated Legal Services Office.
In my recommendations addressed to the Minister of Human
Capacities and to the Director General of the National Healthcare
Curtain hugger crafted
by the psychiatric patients
in the activity room
95
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