Keywords: Patient rights, health facilities, governance, power
 

"Patient rights implementation in health facilities in Karnataka, India A critical perspective on governance"

In this thesis, the formal and informal rules, institutions, norms, and beliefs that govern how patients, their family members, health care providers and other stakeholders perceive and practice patient rights in hospitals in Karnataka, a southern state in India, were examined. This study on patient rights captured structural issues at the policy and organizational level, as well as diverse forms of power asymmetries that exist between patients and other actors. The study was primarily qualitative in nature and used various data sources such as litigations from the Supreme Court of India on patient rights violations, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observations in select health facilities, and policy documents. The findings indicate that the formal governance arrangements made only a symbolic or a perfunctory effort, ignored human rights-based discourses, problematically exacerbated unequal power positions in health care provider-patient relationships, undermined patient rights and therefore, rendered care-seeking individuals powerless.

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