GAINS OF HEALTHCARE SERVICES FROM PATIENT RIGHTS, AND EVALUATION OF HOW THESE GAINS ARE PERCEIVED BY HEALTHCARE PERSONNEL, CONSIDERING THE
PRACTICES OF THE ORGANIZATIONS THEY WORK IN TAPAN Birkan, Istanbul Bilim University
Healthcare Services Vocational School Vice Principal. Istanbul, TURKEY ABSTRACT:
In recent years, Patient Rights have been a momentously-emphasized subject as a reflection of living and health rights, which are the most fundamental rights. Patients feel weak and in need of protection against developing medical technology, health system that gets more and more complex, and healthcare organizations starting to acquire a commercial qualification. The need for endeavours aiming to protect human dignity and integrity and to increase the respect shown to the patient as an individual arise at this point. The existence of Patient Rights is not only limited to the respect and value shown to patients, but also minimizes the problems between patients and health system, increases the efficiency of offered healthcare service by ensuring the patient's and family's participation in the treatment process, prevents commercialization of healthcare services, enables patients to get secure service at the healthcare organization, and serves the purpose of humanizing healthcare services. PURPOSE:
The purpose of this study is to conduct a questionnaire with healthcare personnel in Izmir, Ankara, Samsun and Bitlis provinces in order to determine how the concepts of quality and patient safety, which are important gains of healthcare services from patient rights, are perceived by healthcare personnel, considering the practices of the organizations they work in.
FINDINGS:
In order to look into the attitude of healthcare personnel towards patient safety culture, frequency analysis has been carried out at first, and then it was reviewed whether their attitude towards patient safety culture differs according to the personnel's profession, educational status, training on total quality and patient safety, and work experience. Results of frequency analysis to set the framework of the questionnaire participants are as follows:
When the profession of questionnaire participants is asked, 17,8% stated they are doctors, 51,4% nurses, 15,9% technicians and 12,1% administrative personnel. When their educational status is asked, 84,1% of questionnaire participants stated they have bachelor's degree, 20,8% high school degree, 13,1% postgraduate degree and 2,8% doctoral degree. To the question on whether they got training on total quality and patient safety, 42,1% said yes, 49,5% said no, and 7,5% stated they did not remember. 29,9% of questionnaire participants are from Izmir, 21,5% from Ankara, 23,4% from Samsun and 25,2% from Bitlis. 12,1% of questionnaire participants totally agreed, 32,7% agreed, 7,5% totally disagreed, 27,1% disagreed to and 20,6% had no idea on the question "there is an efficient system to collect feedback from patients and improve these data." 15,0% totally agreed, 29,9% agreed, 13,1% totally disagreed, 28,0% disagreed to and 14,0% had no idea on the question "our organization has problems regarding patient safety." 20,6% totally agreed, 43,0% agreed, 8,4% totally disagreed, 16,8% disagreed to and 11,2% had no idea on the question "the organization I work in shows necessary respect to patient privacy." 22,4% of questionnaire participants totally agreed, 39,3% agreed, 5,6% totally disagreed, 15,9% disagreed to and 16,8% had no idea on the question "the organization I work in provides the patient with necessary information on his/her treatment." 20,6% of questionnaire participants totally agreed, 40,2% agreed, 10,3% totally disagreed, 16,8% disagreed to and 12,1% had no idea on the question "patients have easy access to service in the organization I work in."
CONCLUSION:
In order to examine these differences, normality test is conducted first and it is observed that attitude plans are distributed normally (p=0,052). In two-way ANOVA tests conducted according to all demographic aspects, no difference is observed in terms of profession, educational status and type of organization (p>0,05). However, there is a difference between personnel that got Total Quality Management and Patient Safety training, and also in terms of years of work experience in the organization (p<0,05). Since the questionnaire was conducted in different provinces, difference according to provinces is also reviewed; however, no difference is observed in terms of patient rights and patient safety (p>0,05).