Dignity
Nurses and nursing staff treat everyone in their care with dignity and humanity - they understand their individual needs, show compassion and sensitivity, and provide care in a way that respects all people equally.
Principle A: RCN Principles of Nursing Practice
Welcome to the dignity resource, devised by the RCN.
The Principles of Nursing Practice describe what everyone can expect from nursing practice, whether colleagues, patients, their families or carers. Principle A underlines the importance of supporting and promoting dignified care and how fundamental it is to quality care in all settings.
This resource aims to support everyone working in the nursing team in the delivery of dignified care. It brings together key messages and practical insights gained from the RCN's 2008/2009 'Dignity: at the heart of everything we do' campaign, building on the achievements of the campaign and related work, and illustrating the description of quality nursing care outlined in Principle A.
The different sections of the resource are:
- Definition of dignity - this provides a starting point to explore what dignity means to you and what dignity might mean for patients/clients in your care setting.
- Dignity in practice - promoting dignity in practice involves considering people, places and processes. Here we share some of the creative solutions people have found. Even small changes can lead to big effects to people's experience of dignity.
- Learning with the RCN - the award winning dignity material on the RCN's Learning Zone.
- RCN publications - gathers together all the outputs from the RCN's campaign.
- UK wide dignity resources - keep up to date with resources to support you.
- Discover more - tells you about other RCN resources you can use to add to and update information about dignity in care.
If you have any comments or enquiries regarding this resource please contact us at: qualityandsafety@rcn.org.uk.