Places visited by the National Preventive Mechanism in 2011
should be stressed that physicians are employed by all of the facilities. Medical examinations examinations were carried out in clean and separate rooms.
Most of the visited establishments were sufficiently equipped with medications and
life-saving medical equipment. Only one physicians (station in Gorzów Wielkopolski) notified the visiting team that more first aid drugs in the emergency room would be desirable.
The visiting team also noticed the lack of life-saving equipment. In the opinion of the National Preventive Mechanism, a facility of this kind should have such equipment. Moreover,
the emergency room should be equipped with medical products, medical equipment and
diagnostics apparatus listed in the Annex to the Ordinance. Based on the feedback from
the emergency room in Gorzów Wielkopolski, the medications specified by the physician
were delivered to the emergency room.
The National Preventive Mechanism recommended to:
• Purchase additional medications and life-saving devices.
e) Right to intimacy and privacy
All the visited sobering-up stations, except for the one in Gorzów Wielkopolski, were
monitored. In some of them monitoring also extended to rooms which were used for
changing clothes and for admitting patients (Zabrze, Tarnów, Grudziądz). In the opinion
of the National Preventive Mechanism, the installed video cameras, without a function
of covering the patients’ private parts and which monitored the whole room, may lead to
violating the intimacy and privacy of persons who are changing their clothes.
Also in the station in Zabrze, medical services were provided without respecting the
intimacy and personal dignity of patients. The emergency room in this station was located
in a connecting room with no doors, in fact it was a part of a passageway. Moreover, members of the staff were “taking shortcuts” through this room when walked between corridors,
social room and admission room. Consequently patients were forced to tolerate the presence of persons other than the medical personnel.
In response to the Mechanism’s recommendations, the changing room at the station
in Grudziądz was equipped with a screen; in Tarnów the door was fixed to ensure that the
patients’ intimacy is respected. On the other hand, the Director of the station in Zabrze
informed the NPM that the video recorder in the admission room is placed in such a manner so as not to film a patient when he is changing his clothes and that the consulting room
is equipped with a screen which may be used by the staff in order to ensure that patients’
intimacy and privacy is respected.
The National Preventive Mechanism recommended to:
• Ensure that patients’ right to privacy and personal dignity is respected when they
change clothes, take a bath or receive medical treatment – by performing all of the
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