Paciento teisių ir pareigų teisinio reglamentavimo Lietuvoje problematika ir raidos tendencijos ; The problems and tendencies of legal regulation of patient's rights and duties in Lithuania

Abstract

The article analyzes the shortcommings of the regulation of a patient's right to complain and evaluates the legitimacy of the standard patient informed consent form. The systemic analysis of the Lithuanian healthcare legal regulation discloses that a patient's right to accessible health care is declining. This is in contrast to the tendencies of legislative regulation of the Scandinavian states. The draft of Law on the Rights of Patients and Compensation of the Damage to their Health envisages a patient' s duty to provide the health care specialists with information. The article evaluates this duty and recommends to define by law the social and culturai values which a patient is expected to share with a doctor. Such regulation would set the right to col1ect information about the facts of a patient's private life that are necessary to make a correct diagnosis, select the appropriate treatment or nursing.