Health Management Student’s Knowledge about Patient Rights in Public Universities in Turkey

Background: It is important for health care managers to understand patient rights before making an important health care related decision. Aim of the study was to assess health management student’s knowledge on patient’s rights in public universities in Turkey.

Materials and Methods: A survey was conducted among undergraduate health management students enrolled in three public universities in Turkey. Data was collected using self-administered questionnaire on patient rights. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study participants. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis Test were used to identify a relationship between knowledge and other factors.

Results: Total 400 students from health management department from three different public universities participated in this study. The participants' mean age was 20.97± 1.68 years old (range, 18-32 years). 59% of students were male and 41%of them were female. The results showed there were not significantly different in knowledge score between genders (P=0.064). There were statistically significant differences in terms of knowledge score for different year of study groups (P=0.002) also there was a statistically significant difference in Knowledge score for students from different university (P=0.000).

Conclusion: In general, 65% of respondents had good level of knowledge while 35% of them had bad knowledge about patient rights. More than half of the students have good knowledge among the patient rights; the knowledge score is different among the senior and junior students and among universities.