Assessment of hospitalized patients awareness of their rights: a cross-sectional descriptive study

Abstract

Introduction: in this modern era and in the speedily changing atmosphere of health care, health care practice and patients has affected by many factors. These days, in many states the patient rights has become the pivot of the national attention in medical culture. Awareness of health rights is important to achieve the best level of health care. The study was aimed to assess the awareness of hospitalized patients about the rights.

Methods: a cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in different wards of public sector tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar, over four months duration from February to May 2018. Hospitalized patients who were being admitted for at least two days from 17 to 70 years of age were included. Before asking the patients to answer the questionnaire, consent from the patients was acquired. A self-administered semi-structured questionnaire was adopted. Data analysis was done through SPSS version 22.

Results: among 200 participants 46% were male and 54% were female, 35.5% were from urban and 64.5% were from rural areas. Patients were less aware of their individual rights, like 65.5% of clients were not cognizant of the patients special bill of rights while 59% were aware to receive non-discriminatory and timely health services.

Conclusion: most of the clients were not conscious of their individual health rights. About half of the sample knew that the patients will receive respectful care and the patients will receive care in clean and medically safe environment.