Respect for patients' dignity in primary health care: a critical appraisal.

Objective: To address the challenges of modern health care that patients call "inhumane medicine" by investigating the concept of dignity. That is, to answer the question: what does it mean to respect patients' dignity, and can focusing attention on dignity address the lack of trust in and respect for GPs?
Design: To scrutinise the concept of dignity as a basic term in health care by analysing its limitations.
Implications: Respecting patients' dignity, and meeting them as whole persons and not as the aggregation of organs, functions and processes, is crucial in modern health care. However, even a health care focusing on dignity can become paternalistic and undignified. Hence, dignity appears to be a concept that addresses a basic challenge in modern health care, but which can be dangerous if its limitations are not respected.