Attitudes of nurses and patients in psychiatric hospitals in Shiraz towards the rights of patients with mental disorder

In recent years, protection of the rights of hospitalized psychiatric patients became a key issue in the delivery of care to these people. Despite its importance, little research has been conducted on this topic and little information exists that focus on assessing and comparing the attitudes of psychiatric patients and nurses.The current study aimed to determine the differences in attitude of nurses with those of patients at the Ibn Sina hospital in the Shiraz towards multiple facets of psychiatric patients’ rights .
This cross-sectional descriptive study was done among nurses and hospitalized patients in a psychiatric hospital to determine their attitudes toward patient rights . data was collected by two questionnaire that were designed for nurses(22 questions) and patients, (29 questions) . Data was analyzed by SPSS19 software using descriptive statistics, Chi-square and Pearson correlation tests.
In this study was conducted on 60 nurses and 100 patients admitted to various wards of Ibn Sina hospital in the Shiraz city. More than half of nurses (78.3%) were agreed with the necessity of informing the mentally ill patients about their rights at the time of admission in medical center. The result showed that majority of both groups agreed with active participation of the patients in decision-making related to their health care. According to this survey, more than half of patients deemed the rules of hospitalization of mentally ill patients such as: possibility of refusal/withdrawal of the proposed treatment or leaving the hospital contrary to the medical advice, while only 38.3% of nurses were agreed to those rules in some clauses . (P value = 0.000).
In order to protect rights of mentally ill patients, their family and society, we should identify weaknesses and shortcomings of the basic right of this group and give suggestions for its improvement. considering a bill of rights which cover the needs of mentally ill patients, could be a turning point for improvement of the quality of care as well as increasing patient's satisfaction.