Patients Participation in Health Care Decision Makings in Hospitals Affiliated with Saveh School of Medical Sciences, 2016

Patient's participation in decision-making for healthcare and disease management is related to their high satisfaction and improvement of treatment outcomes in chronic conditions. This study aimed to measure patient's participation in healthcare decision-making at hospitals affiliated with Saveh School of Medical Sciences in 2016.
In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 220 hospitalized patients in internal-surgical wards of two general hospitals in Saveh city were selected by simple random sampling method. Considering the previous studies and tools to measure patient's participation in decision making, a researcher-made questionnaire was used to assess admission, inpatient and discharge periods. Content Validity Ratio (CVR) of questionnaire was 0.72 and its Content Validity Index (CVI) was 0.95. Coronbach’s alpha was measured for reliability (0.934). Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient, ANOVA and t-testin SPSS v20 software were used for data analysis.
Findings showed that patient's participation were 46.96% in admission and 54.54% in inpatient and 58.63% in discharge periods. In addition, relationships were found between occupation (p=0.011) and previous hospitalization (p=0.013) with participation.
In this study, despite the high rate of overall participation of patients, participation in admission period was moderate. According to patient's condition, it is not possible to provide information and request for decision and participation for all patient sat the time of admission. However, it seems that some serious involvements are needed to improve patient's participation.