حیات (Aug 2010)
Protecting Patients’ Privacy by Medical Team and Its Relation to Patients' Satisfaction
Abstract
Background & Objective: Privacy is a basic humanity principle. Protecting patients' privacy is a necessity in health care organizations; and along with the patients' satisfaction, is one of the main indicators of quality of care. The objective of this study was to assess patients' privacy protecting by medical staff and its relation to patients' satisfaction. Methods & Materials: This is a cross-sectional survey in which 360 inpatients were recruited using convenience sampling method from an emergency department. Data were collected using a questionnaire and were analyzed using statistical tests in the SPSS. Results: According to the results, about one half of the patients reported poor privacy protecting and one other half (49.4%) reported that their privacy was protected "relatively good" to "good". A strong correlation was found between level of privacy protected and the patients' satisfaction in various dimensions. There was significant correlation between some of demographic variables with privacy protecting and patients' satisfaction. Conclusion: In our study, protecting patients' privacy and also patients' satisfaction was not generally appropriate. More attempts of clinicians are required to improve the quality of care to promote patients' privacy as well as patients' satisfaction.
