Dehumanization of health care

Degrading medical treatment
Abusive treatment of women in labour
Undignified medical treatment

Nature

Patients are being perceived and treated as things or nonpersons or lesser persons without any warmth in human interaction. The same social forces that contribute to dehumanization in economic and political milieus lead to dehumanization in health care: aggregation of services, bureaucratization of services, secularization of values, professionalization of skills, and proliferation of technologies.

Incidence

A 2021 survey by the Commonwealth Fund found that 38% of adults in 11 high-income countries felt their healthcare providers did not spend enough time with them or failed to listen carefully, indicating widespread experiences of dehumanization in health care. Reports from the World Health Organization highlight that such issues are prevalent in both developed and developing nations, particularly in overburdened public health systems.
In 2018, a widely publicized case at the University Hospital of La Paz in Madrid, Spain, revealed that terminally ill patients were left unattended for hours, with staff reportedly ignoring calls for assistance, sparking national debate about the erosion of compassionate care.

Claim

The highly technical nature of hospitals and specialist practices is bewildering. Many patients do not understand what is going on and want someone to listen to them, to make them feel less like an object.

The architectural design of modern British hospitals is soulless; aesthetically pleasing dimensions that would provide an atmosphere of healing are absent from modern hospital buildings.