Accountability in Teaching Hospitals: A National Study

Hospital is an organization that is responsible for care and treatment of all people. The requirement of accountability in hospitals is increasingly considered. The purpose of this research is to identify accountability in the teaching hospitals of the country. The Descriptive- correlation study was performed on 1034 case hospital staff and patients in major Iran’s hospitals. Data Collection was done with a valid and reliable self made questionnaire. The questionnaire had eight dimensions (ethical، political، cultural، operational، structural، financial، informational and legal) and 31 questions. Data analysis was performed by using Pearson Correlation test and t-test by SPSS16. Results has been shown the most frequent among the female respondents population (n=564) 54. 55%. The highest and lowest frequencies of respondents were aged 30-20 years (42. 45%) and less than 20 years (6. 67). The highest and lowest accountability scores among hospitals was respectively (4 ±0. 66) and (3. 06±0. 63) that this difference was statistically significant. Results showed the influence of political dimension in accountability selected educational hospitals had higher average mean than other dimensions. The strongest relationship was shown between the ethical and information (r=0. 523، Pvalue<0. 001). Finally the overall situation of accountability in hospitals had a moderate to high mean (3. 25 ±0. 63). According to the state''s accountability in the teaching hospital، this was lower than desirable in some aspects، planning for the restructuring by starting to respond in a hospital emergency department is required.