Part I
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities218 should be provided with various forms of personal assistance, broadly understood mobility
measures, and reasonable accommodation to ensure to those persons the
enjoyment or exercise, on an equal basis with others, of all fundamental
freedoms as well as safety. In this context, the lack of emergency call installations, identified also in some visited psychogeriatric wards where there are
supine patients who are unable to leave the room to notify personnel about
any emergency.
The NMPT’s recommendation based on the above arguments is received
by its addressees in different ways. Some institutions declare they will install
emergency call systems, while others refuse to do so and claim that it would
create a risk of electric shock in the case someone purposefully damages the
installation.
The inequality of hospital patients’ safety standards, identified by the
NMPT in this regard, requires therefore the introduction of systemic solutions.
Article 8 of the Act on the Rights of Patients and Patient Ombudsman,
of 6 November 2008, stipulates that patients have the right to health care
services provided by healthcare providers with due care and in conditions
which meet applicable professional and sanitary requirements laid down in
separate regulations.
The Regulation of the Minister of Health of 26 June 2012 on specific requirements to be met by premises and equipment of medical service providers does not require the installation of emergency call systems available in
patient rooms, bathrooms or other rooms used by patients in hospital wards
(including psychiatric wards visited by the NMPT).
According to Article192(a) of the regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure of 12 April 2002 on technical conditions to be met by buildings and
their sites219, apartments in a multi-apartment buildings and separate residential units in collective housing buildings should be equipped with door
communication systems and emergency call systems adjusted to the needs
of persons with disabilities.
This requirement was introduced in 2012 and explained in the Information of the Government of Poland on measures taken in 2012 in order to
implement the provisions of the resolution of the Polish Sejm [lower Parlia Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006 and ratified by Poland on 6
September 2012.
219
Dz. U. of 2015, item 1422, consolidated text.
218
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