[Respecting rights of hospitalized children]

Abstract

Children's rights are nowadays an important social, pedagogic, legal and moral problem. Practical respecting of resolutions included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child is far from perfect and requires changing social way of thinking. To attain this, the contents and essence of children's rights have to be disseminated and consequently enforced. The aim of my research was to answer the question: "What are the conditions for upholding children's right to respect at children wards?". The subject of my analysis was nurses' value hierarchy and individual conditions influencing respecting children rights. Research procedures were directed towards finding the answer to the following question: "What is the range of upholding children's right to respect?". I defined children's right to respect on the basis of analysis of Janusz Korczak's scientific output and the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The rights being the subject of my research are classified either as "soft" or "hard" rights. "Soft" rights are defined in articles no. 12-16 and 31. Rights defined in articles no. 6, 7, 9 and 24 are referred to as "hard" rights. The synthesis of research results leads to the following solution of the research problem: The assumption of a strong influence of the most important values on mental life-thinking, perception, emotional-motivation processes, attitude and behavior of questioned nurses did not have proper empirical confirmation. Nurses' value hierarchy does not ensure upholding of children's right to respect in hospitals. Nurses' awareness of children rights reaches average level, while their knowledge and activity are at low level, and understanding of essence of children's rights and valuation of the rights--at average level. Average level of awareness of respecting children's rights makes children's existence in hospital imperiled by intuitive, often routine activities of nurses. The level of nurses' awareness is differentiated by age, place of employment and seniority. The dependence of awareness level upon questioned nurses' education has not been proved. The scale of upholding of children's right to respect has been defined on the basis of assumed indices conditioning the respect at an average level. It does not prove that children rights are respected in hospitals, as some of the rights are respected only to a small extent, causing menace to children existence. To change the existing situation, regular assessment of respecting children rights by all medical personnel shall be conducted regularly. Legal issues shall be included in the list of obligatory subjects of nursing studies and of all external forms of additional nurse training. These and other activities shall ensure existential safety for children in the hospital and increase the prestige of a nurse as a job.