OSUĐENIK I/ILI PACIJENT - ETIČKA I ORGANIZACIONA PITANjA USLUGA ZDRAVSTVENE ZAŠTITE U ZATVORIMA

Abstract

Normatively highly developed standardization of the provision of health care services in penitentiary institutions fails to neutralize the extreme noncomplementarity between the concept of health and the concept of prison. Prison in itself endangers the health of prisoners, and the experience of going to prison overlaps in many ways with the experience of a serious (incurable) disease. This internal contradiction also opens up a special organizational-ethical dimension of health care in prisons, due to which health care services in prisons still have a strong tendency to oscillate in the space between punishment and medical care, between control and human rights, and a convict with health problems is evidently not (still) in the same position as every other patient. Security reasons can often be in conflict with the principle of complete professional independence of the medical staff and the necessary relationship of confidentiality between the medical staff and the convict who needs medical assistance and care. The paper points out the contradictions and complementarity of the convict-patient position and discusses important issues of the ethics of prison medicine, as well as the organizational aspect of the health care system in penitentiaries.