Privatization of Healthcare Services from the Nursing Perspective in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: While the privatization of healthcare services holds a potential for better healthcare outcomes, a significant gap remains in understanding its impact on the healthcare workforce, especially regarding nurses' perceptions, with limited research available in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Aim: This study aimed to assess nurses' perceptions of privatization practices in healthcare services in Al-Taif City, KSA.

Methods: This quantitative study used a cross-sectional design. The Nurses' Privatization Perception Scale (NPPS) was distributed electronically to potential respondents in four select hospitals in Al-Taif City, KSA. The random sampling technique was used to recruit a total convenient sample of 237 registered nurses. The IBM SPSS (version 25) was used to analyze the collected survey data.

Results: The findings indicated that nurses generally hold a positive perspective of privatization, aligning with their favorable perceptions across three dimensions of the NPPS: (1) privatization in general, (2) privatization in healthcare, and (3) impact of privatization on nursing. Significant differences in the overall perceptions of privatization across all three domains were observed, influenced by factors such as the age, nationality, and working areas of the nurses, as well as to the hospital where the respondents were employed.

Discussion: Nurses believed that privatization could yield changes that could positively impact healthcare, the nursing profession and their healthcare practices. This outcome is consistent with the current literature, suggesting that privatization could enable the Saudi government to make decisions more quickly and cut costs.

Conclusion: Nurses displayed positive perspective about privatization of healthcare in the KSA. However, more research is required to investigate communication strategies to improve the understanding of the concept of privatization and explore confounding factors influencing nurses' perceptions. This study showed that nurses believed that privatization could bring about positive changes and positively impact healthcare and nurses' practices. The results may aid policymakers in identifying gaps in the understanding of nurses' perceptions of privatization in Al-Taif City and other regions of the KSA, and thus result in awareness programs explaining the value of privatization.