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The concept of privacy, which is used in many disciplines, is a basic human need and also is recognized as an important concept in nursing. The concept of privacy has been described in various dimensions including physical, psychological, social and informational privacy. In this article we review these dimensions. Most of the studies related to the privacy have been carried out in the area of physical privacy. One of the basic areas of privacy in hospitals is related to data protection and the prevention of information inaccuracies. Major factors that threaten the privacy include intrusion upon the seclusion or physical boundaries and unnecessary physical touch. In order to decrease these problems, health worker need to find a new approach of working with patients. Review of the literature showed that only a few studies about the privacy of patients have been carried out. To encourage research in this field, accurate instruments should be developed in order to measure different aspects of the privacy, an aim that is difficult to achieve because of the complex nature of the concept. It is also important that necessity of observing patients’ privacy systematically be thought to medical students

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Background & Aim: Privacy is one of basic rights of the patients. Privacy becomes important for the adolescents when they hospitalize in an unfamiliar environment. This study aimed to compare the perceptions of inpatient adolescents with nurses on the observance of privacy and its importance.

Methods & Materials: In this cross-sectional study, 175 nurses and a convenience sample of 180 inpatient adolescents who had met the inclusion criteria were recruited to the study. Data was gathered using a questionnaire. Man-whitney u and kruskal-wallis statistical tests were used to analyze the data.

Results: The results showed that there was significant differences between nurses&apos and inpatient adolescents` perceptions on the observance of privacy and its importance (man-whitney u, P<0.001). The most important priority regarding the privacy from nurses&apos point of view was "covering the unnecessary parts of the body while caring" whilst it was "providing a pleasant decorated environment, telephone, toilet and bath in room, and hospitalization in a room with peers" from the adolescents&apos point of view. The most observed case about privacy from the nurses&apos point of view was "taking immediate action to help the teenagers if necessary" whilst, from the adolescents view, it was "calling them with their favorite names".

Conclusion: The mean perceptions of nurses were higher than the adolescences toward observance of privacy and its importance. The results can guide nurses to improve quality of care for this group.

 

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Background & Objective: Privacy is a basic humanity principle. Protecting patients&apos privacy is a necessity in health care organizations and along with the patients&apos satisfaction, is one of the main indicators of quality of care. The objective of this study was to assess patients&apos privacy protecting by medical staff and its relation to patients&apos satisfaction.

Methods & Materials: This is a cross-sectional survey in which 360 inpatients were recruited using convenience sampling method from an emergency department. Data were collected using a questionnaire and were analyzed using statistical tests in the SPSS.

Results: According to the results, about one half of the patients reported poor privacy protecting and one other half (49.4%) reported that their privacy was protected "relatively good" to "good". A strong correlation was found between level of privacy protected and the patients&apos satisfaction in various dimensions. There was significant correlation between some of demographic variables with privacy protecting and patients&apos satisfaction.

Conclusion: In our study, protecting patients&apos privacy and also patients&apos satisfaction was not generally appropriate. More attempts of clinicians are required to improve the quality of care to promote patients&apos privacy as well as patients&apos satisfaction.