Excellence in Patient Rights in a Physiotherapy Clinic through an Education-Based Program

 Patient’s rights seem to be accepted theoretically, but often neglected in practice. Respect to patient’s rights by health care providers may optimize health outcomes and quality of life and create a perfect connection between health care services and patients needs as well as their expectations. This study was aimed to identify deficits in respect to patientschr('39') rights and find out if the better respect to patient’s rights is affected by an education-based program.

 This descriptive survey was conducted before and after an educational-based program. A structured interview was used to collect data from 204 participants. The categorized questions were reviewed and classified by using 6MP classification, according to the patient’s rights, and then an education-based program was undertaken. The structured interview was then used to recollect data from the participants. Outcome measures were the percentage of deficits pre and post the education-based program according to the patient’s rights.

 There were high deficiencies in “the right to receive the optimal health services” and “access to optimal and sufficient information” sections. Almost no compliant in the other rights of patient was observed. The results indicated that 187 deficits which was recorded in the pre-test phase were reduced to 57 in the post-test phase, and the number of declared deficits by participants was significantly (P<0.05) reduced in all dimensions of 6MP classification. This means that the identified deficits following the conducted education-based program were dramatically improved (three folds improvement).

 An education-based program plays an important role in promotion of the respect to patient’s rights. This suggests health care systems to have a practical and ethical (not merely legal and official) perspective to patient’s rights which in turn would optimize service quality delivered by health care providers.