Patient Rights: Awareness and Practice in a Tertiary Care Indian Hospital

Abstract

Aim and objectives To study the awareness and practice of Patient rights and to compare the same between general and private ward hospitalized patients of a selected hospital. Materials and methods Descriptive research approach was adopted wherein data was collected from 120 hospitalized patients, i.e. 60 from general and 60 from private ward using a structured questionnaire. It was then analyzed by frequency, percentage and significance test to interpret the awareness and practice of patient rights in the hospital. Results The study reveals that awareness of patient rights was high in most of the cases. There was 71% awareness about the right to confidentiality, 67% awareness of the right to grievance redressal, 65% awareness about the right to be informed, 58% awareness of the right of access to healthcare and 55% awareness about the patient's right to choice of care and decision making. But low (39%) awareness was noted in case of patient's right to informed consent. With regards to practice of patient rights, it was seen that certain rights were well-practiced like 95% practice of the right of access to healthcare, 89% practice of the right to confidentiality and 64% practice of the right to choice of care and decision making. But relatively lower percentage of practice was observed for right to be informed (49%), right to informed consent (44%) and the right to grievance redressal (21%). There was significant difference in the level of awareness and practice of patient rights among private and general ward patients in most of the rights. Conclusion The study was vital in finding that most respondents were aware of patient rights. So also, most of the patient rights were practiced in the hospital in varying degrees, while a few needed immediate rectification and management action. How to cite this article Fernandes AB, D'Cunha S, Suresh S. Patient Rights: Awareness and Practice in a Tertiary Care Indian Hospital. Int J Res Foundation Hosp Healthc Adm 2014;2(1):25-30.

Assessment of Awareness of Health Rights among patients Coming to OPD of Services Hospital, Lahore

“…This was in agreement with Abou Zeina et al which reported the mass media as a major source of information for patients' knowledge of their rights (89.4%) 19 . In contrast to it, a study in Upper Egypt, Minia showed that the main source of information for the patients about their charter of rights was physicians then come placards on the walls of their hospitals and media comes at the end of information sources list 18 .This was in agreement with a study in Saudi Arabia where doctors and nurses were on top of the list of main source of awareness 21 . Different scores were obtained for different rights.…”

“…In another study carried out in Minia University, ~85% of patients stated that the health teams did not give any type of introduction about themselves 18 . A study in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia showed almost 97.3% did not know the name of their health care providers 21 .…”

Nurses’ knowledge and performance of the patients’ bill of rights

“…20 These studies have shown that observation of the patients’ rights after the enactment of the bill has changed over time and remained on average and good levels. Studies in India, 16 Yemen, 17 and Uganda 26 have reported problems in this regard. For instance, the study in Uganda showed that none of the health staff observed all of the rights and 80% of the staff only observed two-thirds of the rights.…”

“…In a study, 80% of the patients were satisfied with observance of their rights by the nurses; 14 this figure was 53% in another Iranian study. 15 Non-Iranian studies have reported inconsistent results so that a study reported good satisfaction 16 and another one reported poor satisfaction 17 with observance of the patients’ rights. Moreover, nurses’ estimate of their performance in observance of the patients’ rights was higher than that of the patients.…”

Patient’s Rights: Assessment of Knowledge and Practices of Physicians at Benha University Hospitals

“…PRs means the legal and ethical issues in the provider-patient relationship, including a person's right to privacy, the right to high quality medical care without prejudice, the right to make informed decisions about care and treatment options, and the right to refuse treatment, [1,2]. It means receiving the right kind of medical care by the right healthcare providers at the right time using the right techniques without any discrimination of any kind, [3].…”