Abstract

Term of patients’ rights defines rights and responsibilities between health care organizations and patients. Health care professionals have very important responsibilities, in order to guard the rights of patients. Nurses can be seen to have more responsibility than another health care professional, because they have some kind of partnership relation with patients. This study aims to determine the knowledge level and attitudes of patient rights among the nurses of the Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) Training Hospital. The study universe consisted of all the nurses at the hospital (n=603) and 120 nurses were chosen with simple random sampling for the study. In general, 41.1% of the study group didn’t receive any education about patients’ rights, 21.7% stated that they didn’t encounter any patient rights issue in their day to day practice, and 64.2% stated that they learned something about the patient rights another resource like TV or mass media. Attitudes of study group were observed changeable from 69.2% to 100% about the universal patients’ rights. A comprehensive effort should be sustained to make the patients rights an essential part of healthcare. Because of that, patients’ rights office should be established in hospitals. These offices should carry out education of healthcare staff and patients about the patient rights, solve the problems which emerged from violation of patients rights, and verify the healthcare is appropriate for patients’ satisfaction.

Key words: Nurse, patients’ rights, patient satisfaction

Article Language: Turkish English