The Role of Implementing Clinical Guidelines for Admission Criteria in Respect of Patient as well as Hospital rights

Respecting patient rights is the most important of ethical issues in a hospital. The aim of this study was demonstrating the role of implementing clinical guidelines in respecting patient and hospital rights.
This study was carried out as an applied, descriptive and cross-sectional study in 2015 for (N=438) ICU admitted patients in selected hospital. In order to measuring patient rights indicators, standardized questionnaire was used and Hospital Information System used for Hospital rights indicators. Descriptive tests (percent, frequency) and inferential tests (in depended T-test, Mann Whitney) were used for data analysis by SPSS 20.
Ethical Considerations: All of data were used by owners’ permissions and without the patient names and characteristics.
Findings: In ICU, The average length of stay before and after implementing guidelines was 4.4-3.56 days (P-Value=0.042). Turnover of bed rate calculated before and after implementing 6.8-7.9 (P-Value=0.027) average interval bed turnover was leveled off at zero (P-Value=0). The total patient satisfaction rate was 75% and 95% (P-Value=0.032). Satisfaction from medical services was 53.3% and 86% (P-Value=0.026), satisfaction from nursing services was 53.3% and 71% (P-Value=0.038) and discharge against medical advice was 1.4% and 1.06% (P-Value=0.042) before and after implementing clinical guideline respectively.
The findings showed that implementing clinical guideline has a positive role in respecting patient and hospital rights. Therefore, strongly recommend to policy makers and hospital managers, by implementing admission guideline not only efficiency and effectiveness of limited resources will be increased but also hospital has a great consideration to ethical issues in healthcare services.