The Status of Social Responsibility and its Dimensions in Public Hospitals of Mashhad: A Cross-Sectional Study

Social responsibility is a concept in which organizations pay particular attention to environmental and social issues in its business processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate social responsibility dimensions in public hospitals affiliated to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2019.

In this cross-sectional and analytical study, social responsibility and its dimensions in 13 public university hospitals of Mashhad were examined using a questionnaire based on 273 samples of staff and customers. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, and standard deviation) using SPSS software version 11.

The highest mean score (2.40) was related to leadership and internal processes, and the lowest mean score (1.83) was related to workplace dimension. The other average scores from highest to lowest were: environmental dimension (2.08), market dimension (2.01), and community and country dimension (1.92). Overall, the social responsibility of the hospitals under study was significantly different from the mean level of 2 (2/05), and considering the positive t-statistic for comparing a sample, it can be concluded that social responsibility was significantly higher than the average level (p-value ≤ 0.05)

Improving the employment status of employees as the most important social capital is very important, which had the lowest score in this study. According to the results of the research, the existence of discrimination and work shifts reduced the satisfaction in this dimension. Lack of employee awareness has been the most important reason for the decrease, which can be promoted by increasing the awareness of employees in this dimension.