The right to Dignity in the Israeli Health System: From legislation to application

החוג ללימודי עבודה מארח את:

קרן סמיונוב-טל

המפגש יתקיים  8.6.2022  בחדר 412 בבניין נפתלי בשעה 15:00 וישודר גם בזום

להרשמה

The right to Dignity in the Israeli Health System:
From legislation to application

 Abstract 
The purpose of this study is to monitor and delineate the process of infiltration and permeation of patient’s right to dignity from legislation to application in the context of the Israeli health system. The study seeks to provide deeper understanding of the process of evolvement and implementation of legal norms in organizations. The research focuses on the test case of the evolvement of the vague legal term ‘dignity’ in hospital settings. The study examines, first, the conversion of the vague statutory value dignity into a set of rules, regulations, and codes of behavior. Secondly, it evaluates the adaptation of rules and regulation by medical administrators and then by health practitioners (i.e., hospital physicians). Lastly, the research examines the extent to which the right to dignity in health settings is equally allocated to patients.
The methodological approach utilized to explore the complexities of the research questions and the multiple data sets was based on a mixed-method approach, including content analysis, in-depth interviews, and statistical analysis. The methods were differentially applied to each one
of the four stages of the analysis according to the different data sets.
While focusing on the legal norm ‘patient’s dignity’, the data lend firm support to the general thesis that processes of evolvement of statutory values in organizations do take place. Although a prevalence of homogeneous subcategories of patient’s dignity among various actors in the organization is identified, a process of differential understanding, implementation, and application of the legal norm ‘dignity’ by different actors within the organization and across organizations is recognized. That is, throughout the various stages of the analysis I found that while some sub-categories of dignity are omitted by some actors (due to limitations and organizational constraints), other actors emphasize, adopt and practice other sub-categories of dignified behavior.