Ethical evaluation of appropriateness of hospitals and physician-patient relationships for disabled patients

ABSTRACTEthical Evaluation of Appropriateness of Hospitals andPhysician-Patient Relationships for Disabled PatientsThe aims of this study are to consider the position of disabled persons in thehospitals, to make the medical professionals focus on disabled persons, a specialgroup of patient, and to increase the attention to the disabled patients of thephysician.General knowledge about the disabled persons is added to research results and ispresented to the readers, after that, the concept of disability is discussed in thesocial and ethical perspective ended theoretical frame.Studies have been carried out at Adana Numune Hospital, Adana State Hospital,Adana SSK Hospital (Cukurova State Hospital), and Cukurova UniversityMedicine Faculty Balcalı Hospital. In the first research, 230 clinicians in thesehospitals have been interviewed using a questionnaire included 14 questions. Theaccessibility of these hospitals for the disabled patients has been evaluated using bydirect observation and having information from the relevant of the hospitals, in thesecond research.The next section included the data obtained from the interviews and theobservations of the accessibility of these hospitals for the disabled patients.Physicians have been noted to tend having a positive discrimination to the disabledpatients. The accessibility of these hospitals has been recorded to be inappropriatefor the disabled patients.In the discussion section, the problems caused by the interactivity between thephysicians and disabled patients have been examined in the perspective of both thepatients and the physicians. The data obtained from the interviews have beendiscussed using the literature, and the observing results of the accessibility havebeen evaluated in this section.Finally, some suggestions have been made to make the disabled patients haveadvantage for taking medical service.Key words: Disability, disabled patient, hospitals, medical ethics, accessibilityix