Advanced Directives:  As a patient, it is your right to accept or refuse medical care to the extent permitted by the law.  If you become mentally or physically unable to choose or communicate your wishes due to an illness or injury, advanced directives, such as “living wills” or “durable powers of attorney” can protect this right. You also have the right to name a person to make decisions for you, if you are unable to do so.  The admissions clerk, your nurse and the case managers will ask you if you have an advance directive or durable power of attorney when you are admitted.  If you have an advance directive or durable power of attorney, you should provide a copy to be placed in your medical record.  If you do not have these documentations and wish to have them, the hospital can help you. 

Do Not Attempt Resuscitation (DNR) Orders: You or your legal decision maker has the right to make choices about approving or rejecting life-sustaining measures, like the use of a ventilator or cardiopulmonary resuscitation.  Chesterfield General hospital has a Do Not  Resuscitation (DNR) policy.  A DNR order by your doctor means that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) will not be started or a ventilator will not be used.  You should discuss your wishes about DNR with your doctor.

Ethics Committee:  What are Ethical Issues?  Ethical issues are related to the care of a patient and the decisions that are sometimes necessary to be made. Chesterfield General Hospital has an Ethics Committee, which serves as a consultative resource, to help with problems as they affect patients in the hospital.

Three Principles of Ethics 

1. Beneficence: Doing what is best for the person.
2. Justice: Being fair, distributing risks of research.
3. Autonomy: Respect for persons, not using a person for good of society.

When information, education, or consultation are needed on issues about patient care decisions, the Ethics Committee can be called upon to assist families or patients with ethical dilemmas.  This group can provide information on hospital policies, help in clarifying problems and options, facilitation of a meeting and guidance on how to obtain legal advice.  To request a consultation, please contact Case Management at extension 3369, the Chief Nursing Officer at extension 3200 or the House Supervisor from 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 a.m. at (843) 287-2020.

Patient Rights: Chesterfield General Hospital supports the Rights and Responsibilities of all patients receiving care or services at our facility.  To the extent possible, we encourage family participation in the continuity of care and exercise of patients’ rights.

Rights of Patients:  The patient or his/her guardian is entitled to:

• Be treated with courtesy and respect.
• Have his/her family and significant others treated respectfully.
• Know about his/her illness, condition and treatment.
• Give or refuse permission of care, treatment, or research.
• Be examined and treated in privacy.
• Have communications and records concerning his/her care treated confidentially.
• Receive care that supports his/her comfort and dignity.
• Receive pain relief.
• Know the names and positions of person caring for him/her.
• Make decisions by completing an advance directive, living will or by appointing a person to make health care decisions on his/her behalf.
• Take part in ethical issues that arise in the delivery of care.
• Know how complaints about his/her care are handled.
• Be provided with information to ensure a smooth continuum of care and to be offered available options for care, like outpatient follow-up, second opinions, transfers to other facilities.
• Have access to spiritual care and religious support consistent with personal beliefs.
• Receive an itemized bill and explanation of all charges, if requested.
• Be aided by an interpreter or assisting devise when he/she has a communication impairment or does not speak or understand the language of the health care team.
• To expect reasonable safety in the hospital and associated healthcare facilities.

Patients/Parents/Guardians Have the Responsibility to:

• Ask questions about specific problems and request information when he/she does not understand his/her illness or treatment.
• Provide accurate and complete medical information to physicians and other caregivers.
• Provide the hospital with a copy of his/her written advance directive and/or organ donor card if he/she has one.
• Follow the treatment plan recommended by physicians and other caregivers or, if treatment is refused, he/she is responsible for his/her actions and medical consequences.
• Consider the rights of all hospital personnel and other patients by ensuring that his/her visitors are considerate in the control of noise, limiting the number of visitors and refraining from the use of all tobacco products on hospital grounds.
• Respect hospital property and the property of other patients.
• Follow all hospital policies affecting patient care and conduct.
• Provide necessary information to ensure processing of hospital bills and make payment arrangements when necessary.

Pediatric Rights:

• To be called by my name.
• To not have any pain, or as little as possible.
• To know the names of doctors, nurses and other helpers who will take care of me.
• To be warm, comfortable and allowed to move about in my room, except when I need to be still in order to get better.
• To have tests and procedures planned so I won’t become hungry or wait very long.
• To know my room and hospital are safe and secure places.
• To make choices, when possible about my care.
• To cry, make noises, or object to anything that hurts me.
• To have my family with me, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my care.
• To have my caregivers speak in my native language to my family and I.
• To be treated with respect.
• To have privacy.
• To feel safe.