Exploring the extent of the Nurse's Awareness of the Patient's Rights in an Educational Hospital in 2010

Observing the patients’ rights is a criterion of the effectiveness of patients’ satisfaction from the health-treatment services. The present study was performed aiming at “exploring the extent of the nurses’ awareness of the patients’ rights in an educational hospital of Tehran”.This descriptive, cross-sectional study was performed in 2010 and 156 nurses were selected by a random method. Two-section questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire after being prepared and the determination of the reliability and … was distributed between units under study and afterwards, data were analyzed by SPSS version 15 and descriptive and inferential statistics. 58.33%, 39.10% and 2.56% of the nurses enjoyed good, medium and weak levels of awareness respectively. There was a meaningful relation between the awareness and working record (P=0.008%) and the simultaneous working at public and private hospitals (P=0.01%). The highest level (95.51%) of the nurses’ awareness was in the area of “privacy right and ensuring the confidentiality of data” and its lowest level (33.97%) was in the area of “the right to receive necessary information on the group under treatment, amounts of tariffs and insurance cover.” There are shortcomings in the execution of the “Charter of Patients’ Rights” in this hospital and it is necessary to promote the level of nurses’ awareness of the patients’ rights and serious devices and solutions should be considered to increase it.