Abstract:

Background: The rights of a patient are set of rules of conduct which govern the interaction between the patients and health care providers (HCP). Every patient has a right to be informed about their rights and also the responsibility of the HCP. Informed patients are better aware of their diseases, treatment, and care thus, they should also be made to actively participate in their own care. Low understanding and awareness of the patient’s rights impacts not only poor adherence to the treatment but also total care of patients in general and patient’s satisfaction. There is evidence that majority of patients are not aware of their rights which affects quality of care provided. There is a paucity of information about the knowledge and awareness of the patients attending the Health Facilities for treatment or health promotion related to their rights.

Methodology: This study was a cross sectional study which enrolled 347 admitted adult patients in both female and male medical wards of Sekou Touré Regional Referral Hospital from 1st November to 31st December 2020.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine awareness of patients’ rights among medical patients admitted to Sekou Touré Regional Referral Hospital in Mwanza Tanzania.

Rationale: This study will help to improve patient care safety as well as improving doctor patient relationship. Furthermore, this study will be a baseline study for further research regarding patients’ rights in Tanzania.

Results: The results showed just 27% were aware of their rights in the hospital with only 9.2% had seen the patients’ right sign in the hospital. Only 2.9% of the study population knew about their right to confidentiality and privacy regarding their medical and social information’s. About 68.9% of the study population didn’t know the right to receive feedback concerning their illness. Furthermore, most of participants with 97.4% didn’t know the necessity of knowing the qualifications of the attending Doctor. Only 52.4% of the respondent knew the right to know the progress of their illness and the 49.9% responded did not know their right to know the medications they were given. while 69.5% responded no if they had right to have proper discharge medications and proper follow up plans. The general awareness for each particular right has vividly fallen to less than 50% in the study, indicating low awareness in the general population.

Conclusion:
The study has revealed low level of general awareness of the patients’ rights. The majority of the patients had very low understanding of their rights; with very significantly poor awareness in each particular right in the whole course of treatment and hospital admission; while the level of understanding and awareness being highly affected by the age of patients, there was no significance association between awareness of the patients’ rights with sex, education, marital status, and occupation.