Protection of patients' rights in the european court of human rights

Introduction: Currently, there is little attention paid to studying the characteristic features of the protection of patients' rights in the European Court of Human Rights, which is the fact determining the relevance of the scientific research in this area. The aim: To define the basic rights of patients and summarize the practice of the European Court of Human Rights with regard to protection of patients' rights in order to formulate proposals as to the ways of the current legislation improvement.

Materials and methods: In the research, the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, international standards of justice, scientific publications of leading experts in the field of medical law, current and prospective Ukrainian and international laws were used. The research is based on the organic combination of philosophic approaches, general scientific and special legal research methods.

Review: The standards and mechanisms of ensuring the rights of patients were singled out from a whole number of international legal acts. In the Ukrainian legislation, the list of patients' rights corresponds to the main provisions of the Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient and other international legal acts. The protection of patients' rights in different countries varies based on differences in the laws, organization of the healthcare service as well as economic, social, cultural, religious and moral values. Simultaneously, there are common features in the legal protection of patients' rights, in particular appealing to the ECHR. While considering the cases involving protection of patients' rights based on the Articles of the Convention, the Court has developed a number of positive obligations of the state and minimum guarantees, which should be enshrined in national legislations to protect the rights of patients.

Conclusions: The absence in the national legislation of clearly defined concepts of medical law limits the potential of legal protection of the rights of patients and necessitates the development and adoption of a single legal act to efficiently regulate the rights and obligations of the physician and the patient, provide classification of healthcare services, procedures and conditions of the services provision, quality criteria, etc. The prospective Medical Code of Ukraine shall become such a normative legal act, since the need for its development provides prospects for further research in this area. The ECHR practice affects national legal practices, primarily in the information, social and educational aspects, contributes to development and adoption of new concepts, court legal culture and a new reference system to comply with the Convention and Court practices.