Nurses’ versus patient’s awareness about patient rights and nurses’ compliance to these rights

Background In spite of the achievements concerning patient rights and ethical problems in healthcare in Egypt, several problems still persist, including the unethical behavior of some healthcare workers, and patient understanding of the concepts of the patient rights. Aim To assess nurses’ versus patient’s awareness about patient’s rights and nurses’ compliance to these rights. Research design Comparative descriptive design. Setting The study was conducted in two types of hospitals in Egypt, three governmental hospitals (university hospital, health insurance hospital, and ministry of health hospital) and one of them private hospital. Study sample Two groups of the patients were included in the present study: a total of 400 nurses who provide direct care to patients (100 in each hospital), and a total of 400 patients who present at the time of the study (100 in each hospital). Tool There were three tools used for data collection: I. nurses’ awareness toward patient rights’ questionnaires, II. patient’s awareness toward patient rights’ questionnaires, and III. nurses’ compliance to the patient’s rights from patients’ point-of-view questionnaire, these structured questionnaires were adopted by Said (2010) to assess nurses’ versus patients’ awareness toward the patient’s rights and compliance of nurses to these rights. Results The results revealed that 60.75% of nurses had a high level of awareness to patients’ rights and 34.23% of patients had good awareness toward their rights, in addition, there was a statistical significant difference in the compliances of nurses about patients’ rights between private hospitals and governmental hospitals (P=0.001). Conclusion The study findings showed that there was a significant difference in nurses’ compliance regarding patients’ bill of rights in four hospitals, especially in governmental hospitals. Recommendations The study recommended that the concept of patients’ rights should be given as a regular and specialized educational program and retraining and putting it as a course in curriculum.