Patient Rights in America

I have looked through the VCU library databases online extensively. I have changed my approach to this paper a couple of times because there is so many different ways to go about writing my paper. Some of the sources I found were helpful to me. I have gone and looked for even more sources to replace a few that were in some of my Annotated Bibliographies. While I was writing this review and going over my sources it felt like I was over-lapping some topics. So I tried to add sources that varied a little more in categories. I began looking for a different perspective of information. Before, I have been told that I’ve just been finding factual information like statistical numbers and data. So my hardship has been looking for more information that I could possibly use to articulate my research question. To write my paper, I have figured out that there is a question that has to be specifically defined in order for me to start explaining my topic. That question is, “How are patients’ rights defined?” There will be two ways of answering this, by definition of real law and by definition from an actual patient. My research topic question is, “How have patients’ rights changed in hospitals/clinics/nursing homes/small healthcare practices across the US in the last decade?” I broke this topic piece down into five different categories, I hope these categories are on the right track on organizing and laying out my paper, those names are:

1. Patient Awareness (the knowing and lack thereof can affect their healthcare)

2. Who Decides on the Patients’ Rights?

3. When Things Get Legal. (malpractice)

4. Back in The Day (the history of healthcare/hospice care/ hospital policies)

My ultimate goal for my paper is to help a Patient be aware of all there possibilities. Also letting them know what they can do to get nothing but the best healthcare. When a patient has plenty of knowledge of how/what to do when something goes wrong, things will be much easier on them. For this...