Patient rights
You have the right to good care and treatment, the right to participate in decisions concerning your treatment and the right to receive information about your treatment.
Right to good care and treatment
You have the right to good healthcare and medical care. Healthcare professionals must respect your beliefs, privacy and dignity while providing treatment. Whenever possible, your mother tongue, culture and individual needs must be taken into account during your treatment.
Healthcare services must not discriminate patients based on their age, state of health or handicaps, for example. Only medical reasons may affect treatment decisions.
Your opinion must be considered during treatment
Healthcare professionals must provide treatment in cooperation with you. You can refuse a treatment or procedure if you want. If you refuse a treatment, care must be provided in another medically acceptable manner.
You are not entitled to receive any care that you may desire. The final decision on the treatment is always made by a doctor on medical grounds.
A patient can refuse a treatment or procedure even if their state of health requires it. The doctor must explain to the patient in an understandable manner what the refusal means. If the patient continues to refuse the examination or treatment, the refusal is recorded in the patient documents.
Healthcare professionals must provide you with information concerning your state of health and treatment
Healthcare professionals must be proactive in providing you with information concerning your state of health. You have the right to receive information on different treatment alternatives and their effects and possible detriments. You have the right to know all factors that may be significant when the decision concerning your treatment is made.
- A patient must not be provided with information if the patient does not want to receive it.
- Information must not be provided if the provision of the information would severely endanger the patient’s life or health.
- The suspicion that the information might be harmful to the patient is not a sufficient reason to withhold the information if the patient requests it.
The information concerning your state of health and treatment must be provided in a manner that allows you to understand its content to a sufficient degree. If you and the treatment personnel do not have a common language, healthcare professionals must arrange for interpretation when necessary.
You have the right to check the information in your patient documents. You can request corrections if the information is incorrect. The request is made to the healthcare unit that recorded the information. You can view your patient data in the My Kanta service. You can also record advance health care directives and/or register as an organ donor in the My Kanta service.