Female patients report on health care staff's disobedience of ethical principles.
BACKGROUND
Earlier studies have shown a high prevalence of abuse in health care (AHC). We hypothesized that patients might easily feel abused when staff do not follow prevailing ethical principles. Therefore we developed the Violations of Ethical Principles Questionnaire (ViolEP), with 30 examples of situations in health care where four ethical principles are disobeyed (autonomy, nonmaleficence, justice, and integrity). Respondents reported whether or not they had ever experienced each of the situations, and whether or not they had perceived that event as a violation.


OBJECTIVE
1. What proportion of female patients have ever experienced staff disobeying ethical principles in health care? 2. To what extent are such events perceived as violations? and 3. How well do perceived violations of ethical principles correspond to experiences of AHC?


METHODS
Our sample was 661 consecutive female patients at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Linköping, Sweden. They completed ViolEP and NorVold Abuse Questionnaire (NorAQ) at home and returned them by post.


RESULTS
20/661 (64%) women answered the ViolEP and 426/661 (64%) returned the NorAQ. The majority (73%) (306/420) had experienced staff disobeying ethical principles. More than every second woman had perceived those events as violations (68%) (209/306). The prevalence of AHC was 23%. ViolEP had good sensitivity but low specificity when we used AHC according to NorAQ as the "gold standard".


CONCLUSIONS
The majority of the patients had experienced health care staff disobeying prevailing ethical principles. These events were not always perceived as violations. The reason for this discrepancy needs to be explored.
Swahnberg
Katarina
K
Division of Gender and Medicine, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden. katsw@imk.liu.se
Wijma
Barbro
B
Liss
Per-Erik
PE
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D006176:Gynecology / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D008318:Malpractice / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009774:Obstetrics / Q000941:ethics*; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D011247:Pregnancy; D015995:Prevalence; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations / Q000941:ethics*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards; D013548:Sweden; D016387:Women's Health