Studying the situation of observance of patients’ rights and interaction of those individuals who provide and/or receive health services are regarded as the most significant and salient parameters of qualitative evaluation of health services.
The main aim of this study is to compare the attitudes of patients as recipients of healthcare services with those of physicians and nurses as representatives of healthcare providers regarding the necessity of observance of various aspects of patients’ rights in three hospitals selected as representing the three models of providing medical service (teaching, private and public).
This was a cross-sectional descriptive analytical study and the data were gathered using a questionnaire. Researchers helped the patients to fill in the questionnaire through interviewing and the physicians and nurses filled in their own questionnaires.
The field consisted of three hospitals (a teaching general hospital, a private hospital and a public general one) all located in Tehran. The questionnaires included a set of general questions regarding demographic information and 21 questions about the necessity of observance of patients’ rights. They were filled in by the interviewer for 143 patients and, after being sent to other groups, 143 nurses (response rate = 61.3%) and 82 physicians (response rate = 27.5%) filled them in. The criterion for necessity of each right was measured according to the Likert Scale [from 0 (not necessary) to 10 (absolutely necessary]. The data were analyzed using SPSS 11.5 software. Given the abnormal distribution of the data, non-parametrical tests were used.
The results of this study showed that all of the study groups agreed with the necessity of almost all aspects of patients’ rights and the highest level of disagreement between groups was related to patients’ right of access to information and right of choosing provision provider and deciding on treatment plan. However, these disagreements were not significant altogether.
According to the results, it seems that healthcare providers, especially physicians, should be better familiarized with patients’ right of access to information and right of choosing and deciding. Based on the disagreement between the attitudes of the patients and physicians in this study, it seems that the patients had a higher level of expectations concerning their rights compared to physicians.
Keywords: Patients’ rights, medical ethics, Patients Rights charter
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Introduction:
A review of the historical course of “patients’ rights” issue reveals its global importance in the arena of health system management. Developing the “Patient’s Rights Charter” can be considered as the starting point for moving toward comprehensive attention to securing patients’ rights and providing an accurate definition of relation between healthcare providers and recipients. However, taking into account the interest groups’ views concerning the necessity of these rights and the impact of different factors such as professional status and environmental differences on evaluation of this necessity will guide policymakers in planning promotional and supervisory programs to improve the observance of patients’ rights.
Literature review shows that several studies have been carried out about the awareness of various interest groups regarding different aspects of patients’ rights and the impact of demographic, environmental and cultural factors on this awareness (1–5).
Other studies have evaluated the attitudes of various groups of beneficiaries toward some aspects of patients’ rights (6–7) and the effects of various underlying factors such as age, race, socioeconomic status and intensity of diseases on these attitudes (6–8).
Some other studies have compared the attitudes of different groups in different models of providing healthcare service (8).
Considering various factors influencing the attitudes of interest groups with respect to different aspects of patients’ rights, the purpose of this study was to compare the attitudes of main interest groups including patients, physicians and nurses in sample hospitals from three models of providing healthcare services, namely, teaching, private and public hospitals. The comprehensiveness of this study in evaluating the attitudes of various groups was not found in previous similar studies.