Background: The rights of patients refer to certain privileges that are to be provided to them irrespective of the circumstances when the patients demand for them. The current study aimed to assess cognizance of patients‘ rights.

Objective:

To assess cognizance of patients‘rights among admitted patients & its association with various socio-demographic variables in a teaching hospital in Sindh, Pakistan.

Methods:

Study setting: All general medicine and general surgery wards of Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) Hyderabad and Jamshoro.

Study design: Cross-sectional study.

Study period: 1^st December 2021 to 28^th February 2022.

Study population, Sample size & sampling techniques: The 390 admitted patients were selected through convenience sampling.

Data collection tool & data analysis:  Data was collected on a validated questionnaire after doing piloting. The socio-demographic variable of patients well as cognizance of patients‘rights were the variables of interest. The SPSS version 23.0 for windows was used for analysis. The frequency for all categorical variables were computed in percentages. The continuous variables e.g. age etc. were expressed as mean ± standard deviation. The cumulative mean ± standard deviation for cognizance were calculated. The association of socio-demographic variables of subjects were seeked in relation to cognizance of patients‘rights by applying student t-test & one-way ANOVA test. The p-value of ≤ 0.05 was taken as cut-off for statistically significant results for all applied tests of significance.

Results: Among 390 patients recruited in study, 39.2 % belonged to age group > 48 years. The 63.54% were of age 18 to 27 years with female preponderance i.e., 52.04 %.  Overall mean±standard deviation of score of cognizance was 39.10 ± 18.77.  The gender and marital status of the patients were statistically significantly associated with cognizance of patients (p = 0.00, p = 0.002 respectively).  

Conclusion:  The current study concludes that cumulative as well as individual parameters related to cognizance of rights towards health are highly dependent on the socio-demographic profile of patients.  

Key words: Cognizance, awareness, patients’ rights, admitted patients,