Evaluation of the awareness of dental patients about the patient's bill of rights: A cross-sectional study in dental clinic of Semnan university of medical sciences in 2016

The patient's right is one of the fundamental issues in health care. Correspondingly, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the awareness of patients referred to dental clinic of Semnan University of medical sciences (SUMS) about the patient's bill of right in 2016.
This cross sectional study was conducted on 130 patients (with at least junior school education) who admitted to dental clinic of SUMS in 2016. In this account, in order to collect data, a 2-part questionnaire including 15 questions (5 personal questions and 10 questions related to awareness about patient's right) was used. Answers were categorized as "havent heard", " have heard but not completely aware of", "relatively aware of" and "completely aware of' in Lickert scale which received 0 to 3 score, respectively. Total patient's awareness was evaluated of the scores of 10 questions.
According to the results, patient's awareness of their rights was at a moderate level and the mean score was 19.05± 5.29 (out of 30). Patient's awareness of their rights was acceptable only about 2 out of 10 sections of patient's bill of right in Iran (patient's rights to receive necessary information about diagnosis and treatment options and knowing health care professionals) while the lowest score belonged to item 1 (timely treatment regardless of ethnic, cultural and religious factors). A significant relationship was found between awareness and patient's educational level (P=0.001) but the relationship between awareness and gender, age, matrimonial and residency status was not significant. (P=0.186, P=0.523, P=0.423 and P=0.717, respectively).
According to inadequate awareness of patients about patient's rights, it is recommended that health care providers or educational programs including posters, pamphlets and mass media inform patients about their rights in time of admission to clinic in order to promote the patient's awareness of the patient's bill of rights.