Dignity Violation in Health Care

Abstract

In this grounded theory analysis I sought to understand dignity violation in health care and to explore the context in which such violations take place. I found that dignity violation in health care occurs through processes of rudeness, indifference, condescension, dismissal, disregard, dependence, intrusion, objectification, restriction, labeling, contempt, discrimination, revulsion, deprivation, assault, and abjection. The conditions that promote these processes reside in the positions of the actors involved; in the asymmetrical relationships between the actors; in the health care setting itself, which is characterized by multiple tensions—including those between needs and resources, crisis and routine, experience and expertise, and rhetoric and reality; and in the embeddedness of health care in a broader social order of inequality. These findings suggest several interventions that might mitigate dignity violation in health care.