What are your rights as a healthcare consumer when it comes to the built environment in which you receive care? This Environmental Bill of Rights offers you some ideas -- use it as a checklist and take it with you the next time you go to the hospital, your doctor’s office, or visit a loved one in a nursing home.
You are entitled to an environment that:
- Is easy to find your way around and offers frequent opportunities for orientation to where you are.
- Has unrestricted access to nature through views, gardens, landscaped patios, terraces, courtyards, atria, and natural elements.
- Provides reasonable control over your personal environment, including personalization, electrical lighting, daylighting, noise and sound reduction, odor elimination, thermal comfort, and visual privacy.
- Offers you the ability to select positive distractions, including television, games, video, computers, art, telephone, music, social opportunities, access to nature, and reading material.
- Has activities occur in spaces that are conducive to their purpose.
- Makes it easy for staff members to bring you food, medicine, and other supplies related to your care.
- Provides you with access to furniture and equipment that is comfortable and "user-friendly."
- Maximizes opportunities for your regular lifestyle activities.
- Offers access to a continuous sequence of environments that support your dignity and the dignity of others.
- Is clean.
- Is free from hazards.
- Provides you with personal safety and security for personal possessions.
- Is neat and orderly.
- Inspires your trust and confidence.
- Symbolizes values appropriate to you and others who use it.
- Appropriately acknowledges the local cultural backgrounds and diversity in your community.
- Is appropriate for the various ages, sexes, and physical and cognitive abilities of people who use it.
- Supports interaction with others and care partner participation.
- Minimizes unnecessary "stressors" for all patients/residents, visitors, and staff.
- Is aesthetically appealing to you.
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