Unsatisfied patient's rights: A survey on the views of patients, nurses and physicians

Neglecting patients' rights in a health care system can give rise to a challenging situation between health care providers and patients. The purpose of this study was to compare the views of patients as recipients of healthcare services and physicians and nurses, as healthcare providers, regarding the unsatisfied demands of different aspects of patients' rights in 3 hospitals representing three types of settings (teaching, private, and public). This was a cross-sectional descriptive analytical study. Data were gathered using a questionnaire which was filled out by an interviewer for the patients and self administered for nurses and physicians. The research venues were one general teaching hospital, one first class private hospital, and one non-teaching public hospital, and all 3 were in Tehran. The questionnaire consisted of some general questions about respondents' demographics, and 21 questions concerning the importance of patients' rights, and how well patients' rights were observed. Overall, 143 patients, 143 nurses (response rate: 61%) and 82 physicians (response rate: 27.5%) completed the questionnaire. The degrees of unsatisfied demands were different depending on the various views within each group regarding the degree of importance and observance of each right, which was measured by the Likert's scale ranging from 0.0 (no importance, no observance) to 10.0 (absolutely important, full observance). Concerning the non-normal distribution, the collected data were analyzed by non-parametric tests using the SPSS software (ver. 11.5). Results showed that the studied groups had significantly different views. The most prominent issue concerned patients' to make an informed decision, which was particularly unsatisfactory in the teaching hospital. The results of this research indicate that healthcare providers, especially physicians, need to be informed to show more respect for patients' rights in terms of access to clinical information and making decisions. The results demonstrated that there was a significant difference between the opinions of patients and health care providers regarding the extent of unsatisfied demands of patients' rights. According to the patients, the level of unsatisfied demands of these rights is far higher than that expressed by physicians.