Residents’ Physicians’ Awareness, Intention and Practice of Patient Rights at Ain Shams University hospitals

During the past few years, Egypt has implemented several and diverse legal, political, and
administrative mechanisms to deal with health care ethical problems. Despite nurses and
physicians agreement that patients have rights and that they are committed to respecting these
rights, they are rarely able to do this. Objectives: To determine resident’s physicians’
knowledge, intention and practice of patient rights at Ain shams University Hospitals and to
find out factors that affect Physicians’ practice of patient's rights. Methods: A cross Sectional
study was conducted on a convenience sample of 400 resident physicians that were recruited
from different departments at Ain Shams University Hospital and agreed to participate in the
study. A Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect information about:
personal data, physicians’ awareness, intention and practice of patient rights. Results: All
(100.0%) of the participating physicians were aware about the statement of patients’ rights in
Egyptian health facilities; most of them obtain their knowledge from posters hanged on the
wall of the hospital, undergraduate and post graduate curriculum, and mass media, (99.8%)
had high intention score level towards practicing patient rights; while less than half of them
(45.5%) had high practice score level. There was no statistically significant correlation
between Residents’ physician knowledge, Intention and Practice scores towards patient rights
(p>0.05). In addition, there was a highly statistically significant difference between
physicians practice score levels regarding their specialty (p<0.01); where the majority
(77.0%) of participating physicians working in pediatric departments had got the highest
practice score level for the statement of patient rights Conclusion: The current study found a
gap between physicians’ awareness, intention toward practicing patient rights' and their actual
application of these rights. Recommendations: Hospital Management should develop preservice
(orientation period) and in-service training programs for resident physicians to update
their knowledge and practices in all patients’ rights aspects. Educating the patients about their
rights and actions that they could take if these rights were violated is an important mean for
improving patient satisfaction and improving the quality of care offered at health care
facilities.