Investigation of Viewpoints of Patients on Maintaining Confidentiality regarding Disclosure of Name and Diagnosis of Disease in Jahrom Hospitals in 2018
Author(s): Mansoor Darvishi Tafvizi, Mohamad Javad Zarei, Fatemeh Honarmand Jahromy, Samaneh Abiri, Navid Kalani and Mohammad Hossein Modabber*
Abstract
Introduction: Medical and health professionals and in general anyone with sensitive information should be very careful not to disclose it without consideration. The person who holds information will be responsible to maintain or disclose confidential information for the public interest. This is while, one of the important factors in the relationship between the patient and the medical team is to maintain patient trust in physicians and the treatment team, and thus the patient can provide his doctor and the health system with his most private information for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
Method: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 199 patients hospitalized in internal and surgery wards of Jahrom hospitals in 2018. Random cluster sampling was used in all wards of hospitals. The instruments of the study included a questionnaire of demographic information and a patient name disclosure inventory. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics (mean, percentage, and standard deviation) through SPSS Software version 21.
Findings: The participants of the study were 41.2% male and 58.8% female. The mean score for patients' view about maintaining confidentiality was 3.43 with a standard deviation of 1.13. The minimum and maximum score of patients’ view on maintaining confidentiality was 1.29 and 5 respectively. The sensitivity of 2.5% of patients on confidentiality was very high, the sensitivity of 33% of them was high, the sensitivity of 14.5% of them was moderate, the sensitivity of 23% of them was low and the sensitivity of 27% of them was very low. The view of women and men about maintaining confidentiality is not significant (p>0.05).
Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the sensitivity of 50% of patients on maintaining confidentiality was low or very low, and the sensitivity of 35.5% of them was high and very high. It seems that different cultural factors can be considered as effective factors, which require more accurate examination, in this area.