The Relationship between Nurses' Awareness of the Patient Bill of Rights and the Extent of Compliance with It from the Perspective of Hospitalized Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

 Awareness of patient rights and respecting them are both an important and a fundamental duty of healthcare staff. This study aimed to assess nurses' awareness of the patient bill of rights and their adherence to it from the perspective of hospitalized patients.

 This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in 2022 on 168 nurses and 383 patients admitted to Qa’em Hospital, in the city of Asadabad, Hamadan. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. The questionnaires "The Awareness of the Patient Bill of Rights" by Ruintan et al and "The Level of Compliance with Patient Bill of Rights" by Basiri Moghadam were used in this study. Data analysis was done using SPSS 18, considering a significance level of less than 0.05.

Ethical Considerations: 

In all the stages of this study, ethical principles and data confidentiality were observed and the questionnaires were completed after obtaining informed consent and explaining the research objectives to the participants.

A positive but non-significant correlation was observed between the nurses' awareness of the patient bill of rights and the level of compliance with it from the patients' perspective at a significance level of 0.05 (r=0.04, p=0.61). The mean and standard deviation of nurses' awareness of the patient bill of rights were 9.44±4.34, indicating an average level. The mean and standard deviation of compliance with the patient bill of rights in the hospital from patients' perspective were 32.90±7.73, which was considered optimal. The mean score of nurses' awareness of the patient bill of rights was higher in nurses aged 31-40 years, and this difference was statistically significant (p=0.01). There was a significant difference in the mean score of compliance with the patient bill of rights in the hospital from the perspective of patients across different age groups; the highest mean score was reported by patients over 40 years of age and the lowest, by patients aged 20-30 years (p=0.005).

 The results of the study showed a correlation between nurses' awareness of the patient bill of rights and the level of compliance with it from patients' perspective. It is necessary for the healthcare planners and policymakers to consider interventions in developing and implementing in-service training programs, providing incentives to motivate employees, and establishing strict rules to improve compliance with the patient bill of rights in hospitals. To examine the impact of factors, other than awareness, on the level of compliance with the patient bill of rights in hospitals, it is recommended that interventional and qualitative studies be conducted in the futur.