A Study on the Knowledge of Employed Nurses in Karaj Hospitals about Patient rights

Patient rights are defined as those services patients deserve to receive during their admission period. These rights include the right of selection, decision making, respect, complaint, protection, medication and intensive cares, disregard of their financial, political, geographical situations and their religion. In this respect, a nurse’s duty is to fulfill the patient rights. The present study was conducted to evaluate a random number of one hundred and eighty nine employed nurses who aged 19 years and above. The subjects of the study include those whowere working in the university teaching hospital as well as those working in the Social Security Hospitals located in the city of karaj. A questionnaire was prepared in two sections: The first section includes 8 questions regarding demographic characteristics of the subjects and the second section consists of 21 questions relevant to the knowledge of nurses about patient rights. The results indicate that the level of the participants’ knowledge about patient rights is 22.38 percent. Also, a significant correlation was found between the variable of experience and the participants’ level of knowledge about patient rights (p = 0.009, r = 0.903). Based on our findings, it can be concluded that our nurses’ level of knowledge about patient rights is low as the results of this study compatible with the findings in other studies. Therefore, we recommend further studies on the related aspects to ultimately lead to upgrading the level of knowledge about patient rights on the part of nurses.