A survey about how much physicians give information to their patients in Kerman, Iran

Providing accurate information to patients is an important task of the medical staff that can help establish a relationship complying with current ethical principles. The present study aimed to clarify the current status of informing patients about their diseases by physicians.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in the internal medicine and surgery wards of a teaching hospital in Kerman University of Medical Sciences using a convenience sampling method. Participants answered 13 "yes" or "no" questions about the information given to them by their physicians based on Braddock’s study and the second part of the Patient's Rights Charter in Iran.

Totally 396 patients participated in this study. The results showed that less than half of the patients confirmed their physicians had given information to them and answered "yes" to related questions. There was a significant difference in participants’ answers about awareness of the drugs' names (P-value= 0.002), their side effects (P-value= 0.002), the results of para-clinical tests (P-value= 0.002), and patient's preferences and consent to have awareness of adverse outcomes of disease (P-value< 0.001) between internal medicine and surgery wards, and the frequency of “yes” answers was more in patients at internal medicine than in surgery wards.

Offering appropriate training courses to physicians in order to further improve their relationship with patients to provide more informed decision-making is recommended.