Patient Rights

• The Patient's Rights were written by the ANED ( Associazione nazionale emodializzati)

1 - Everyone is entitled to rapid treatment and care appropriate to his or her health and wellbeing.

2 - Every patient has the right to choose the place of treatment and the health professionals who are to treat him or her.
However, if the chosen health facility is unable to cover the diagnosis and treatment requirements involved, the patient has the right to know the real reasons for this and the prospects for treatment in the future, and is entitled to monitor the waiting list. The patient is entitled to be assigned to another suitable facility and to be given the means of getting there, if it is a long way from his or her home.

3 - Each patient is entitled to the provision of efficient, technologically up-to-date facilities and well-trained, helpful health care staff working "with expertise and humanity".

4 - Each patient has the right to respect for his or her personality and personal privacy, and the compliance with health care and prevention standards: he or she has the right not to become more ill.

5 - Every patient is entitled to the information and knowledge necessary to have awareness of his or her condition and in order to make well-informed decisions.

6 - Every patient is entitled to know the reasons for diagnostic and treatment procedures and any risks and alternatives.

7 - Every patient is entitled to be informed of any clinical trials and may refuse to take part.

8 - Every patient is entitled to take joint responsibility for his or her treatment and for the management of the health care facility.

9 - Every patient is entitled to a full regular audit of the development of his or her clinical condition and to know the results, with the information needed to understand and assess them.

10 - Every patient is entitled to report failures, inefficiency or malfunctions in the health services and to contact the ward managers, the health and administrative management, the members of the board of directors and the controlling authorities, directly or through his or her representatives, to ensure that appropriate measures are taken.

11 - Every chronic patient is entitled to treatment which does not prevent him or her from working or studying.

12 - Every patient is entitled to a home suitable for provision of the treatment, if this has to take place in the home.

13 - Every patient is entitled to a social and working life.

14 - Patients are entitled to meet inside the hospital or clinic to discuss the problems that concern them, to form associations and to choose democratically elected representatives.

• Duty

1 - Every patient has the duty to adapt the disease to his or her life and not life to the disease.

2 - Every patient has the duty to seek all the information needed to allow the responsible management of his or her disease.

3 - Every patient has the duty to respect other people's needs and work.

4 - Every patient has the duty to collaborate with the heath care staff in the provision and improvement of their services.

5 - Every patient has the duty to follow the treatment plans agreed upon.

6 - Every patient has the duty to seek to achieve a general view of problems and not limit his or her outlook to his/her own disease.

7 - Every patient has the duty to take an active part - through associations and membership of local bodies if appropriate - in the planning, decisions and management of the health care facilities.

8 - Every patient has the duty to fight to gain his or her rights.


30 October 1977 - 8 April 1979