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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLES |
Ethical, Religious,cultural Values: Which Is The Important In The Truth Telling?
Dr. Nilüfer DEMİRSOY,a Dr. Ömür ELÇİOĞLUa
aDeontoloji AD, Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, ESKİŞEHİR
Certain obstacles which are in conflict with the linguistic, socio-cultural and traditional roles of medical professionals are experienced concerning the right of a patient to know the truth and the responsibility of medical professionals to inform a patient on the truth. The objective of this study to find out the approaches and attitudes of nurses providing medical care and physicians performing the treatment on telling the truth to patients and those of patients on knowing the truth. The starting point of the study is that there have been numerous dilemmas about making explanations to or informing patients and their families and that meeting this requirement of patients and their families is of great importance for the medical professionals.
The sampling group is composed of 166 physicians and 166 nurses working at the Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Faculty of Medicine Hospital at the same hospital. A survey which consists of questions about the demographical data and a scale which is developed so as to identify the approaches about telling the truth was used in the research. Variance analysis, χ 2 test and t test were used for evaluating the data, and SPSS 10.00 statistical program was employed for this purpose.
It is observed that the tendency to inform patients on the diagnosis of their illnesses which has been on the world agenda for 25 years is acknowledged by the medical team in our sampling group. 88.6% of the physicians and 89.8% of the nurses advocate that patients should be told the truth about their diagnosis. Both groups acknowledge that it is the right of a patient to know the diagnosis of his/her illness. 66.4% of the patients state that they wish to know the truth about their diagnosis.
It is found out that the criteria that the physicians and nurses established for telling the truth are governed by different value judgments. Ethical values are of primary importance for the physicians whereas cultural values precede all others for the nurses.Keywords: Truth telling, telling the diagnoses, valuesTurkiye Klinikleri J Med Ethics 2006, 14:61-71
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