The Perspective of Inpatients about Their Rights in University Educational -Medical Centers

​Background and Objectives : Serious physical, mental and social defects are the risks of the inpatients referring to the university hospitals. Awareness of the patient rights might prevent most of the defects. This study aimed to evaluate patients perspectives regarding their rights. Materials and Methods : A cross-sectional study was conducted with 400 patients in seven university hospitals using researcher made questionnaire. The hospitals were selected based on their specialty of the service and then one of them was selected from each specialty using random selection method. One sample – t-test, ANOVA and linear regression analysis were used in SPSS version 19. Results: In this study, %53.2 of the patients (213 cases) were men and %46.8 (187 cases) were women. The average age was 49.8 years old. Mean scores of components of patient rights were as follows: care questions (ideal score: 17) 10.9, Diet Care (ideal score: 6) 1.7, environmental health (Ideal score: 24) 18.9 and privacy and mental health (Ideal score: 17) 10.6. From the perspective of patients, their rights in the fields of healthcare, environmental, and mental health (except for taking care of diet) were respected at an acceptable level. Significant relationship was not found between gender and age of patients compared with their views of their rights; however. Average scores on indices, sectors and at various hospitals were also significantly different. Conclusion : Caring about diet among inpatients is very important and seems necessary. Satisfaction of patients of their rights may indicate that patients are unaware of their rights. Dissatisfaction in patients with higher educations can confirm it. Representation of the rights charter to admitted patients and explaining its provisions on the first day of admission can prevent unnecessary arguments while having a positive effect on patients' health.