Survey the situation of perceived organizational justice in the Iranian health care system; a systematic review and meta-analysis

Perceived organizational justice is a concept used to describe job-related justice. Considering the role of perceived organizational justice in the healthcare system to increase the satisfaction, motivation, and efficiency in providing quality services, this study was conducted to investigate the situation of perceived organizational justice in the Iranian healthcare system through systematic review.

In the present study, an electronic search was conducted on the Persian websites SID, Iranmedex,  Medlib, civilica, Irandoc and English Web of science, Pubmed, Scopus, and Google scholar using the Persian and English keywords of ‘Justice, Equality, Equality, Organizational Justice, Perceived Justice, Health System, University of Medical Sciences, Health Centers, Hospitals. As a result, 520 articles were studied and evaluated step by step and 469 papers were removed after reading the title and abstract. Finally, the full text of 51 articles was reviewed. Finally, 30 articles that measured the average level of perceived organizational justice were selected and other articles were excluded due to lack of necessary criteria and irrelevance. To analyze the heterogeneity between the studies, the meta-analysis method was used using Stata 14 software and Q test and  index.

  To study the status of perceived organizational justice in the health care system in a systematic and meta-analysis, all 30 studies were illegible. With regard to the dimensions of distributive, procedural, and interactive justice, 23 studies of 30 studies had the required conditions to enter the research.  The total mean score of perceived organizational justice was obtained as 60.71 and the mean scores of 54.74, 58.52, and 62.41were calculated for dimensions of distributive, procedural, and interactive justice, respectively.

The findings showed that the situation of perceived organizational justice in the Iranian health care system was favorable. The dimension of interactive justice, related to managerschr('39') behaviors and relationships with employees, was relatively more favorable than other dimensions of organizational justice. Moreover, the situation of perceived organizational justice and its dimensions in private hospitals was more favorable than other research environments, including public hospitals, staff units, and hospitals selected using the mixed method.