Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Informal payments in clinics raise ethical concerns in healthcare delivery. This cross-sectional questioner survey aims to evaluate the prevalence and related factors of informal payment in healthcare system in Iran.
The study was carried out in 2013, prior to the implementation of the government' Health System Reform among physicians with different specialties. The questionnaire were distributed among the participants during the congresses and continuing medical education programs.
In results; of the total specialist physicians, 276   returned the questionnaires. The response rate was 81.17%. and out of 276 returned questionnaires 257 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The prevalence of informal payments, among the physicians who were susceptible to receiving informal payments, was relatively high (63.8%). The physicians who practiced in the private sector, as well as physicians who practiced in Tehran and those who had a positive attitude towards the informal payments, received more informal payments. From the viewpoint of the respondents, the main cause of informal payments was unrealistic/unfair tariffs and the main consequence of informal payments was the rising costs of patient care.
This study showed that, unfortunately, more than half of the participants did not believe or did not decisively consider informal payments as unethical. This confirms the importance of physicians’ education about the unethical practice of informal payments. However, compare to private sectors, more supervision in public sector may be the main cause of less prevalence of informal payments in public hospitals.
In conclusion: Developing ethical guidelines to prevent informal payments as well as more realistic and fair tariffs would help to decrease the incidence of informal payments.
 

The most important factor in interpersonal relationships is trust. Trust in the physician-patient relationship is key and essential. Understanding the factors that affect trust is a prerequisite for trust. These factors vary in different societies. So we need to identify these factors and provide a single criterion for measuring them. Therefore, because we need a tool to measure these different factors in the context of culture and society, the purpose of this study is to determine the factors that influence public confidence in physicians to provide the necessary evidence for making appropriate instruments in Iran. The first step was to investigate the factors affecting patients' confidence in physicians during a library study. Then, during interviews and numerous discussion sessions, nineteen factors influencing public confidence in physicians were provided. Then, to determine the content validity, twenty experts evaluated the transparency, relevance and importance of the factors. Content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were measured. CVR value for each of nineteen factors was 0.42, therefore content validity of the tool was significant with P.value 0.05. CVI value was 0.944 and content validity of the tool was confirmed. Factors affecting public confidence in physicians in Iran include 19 factors extracted during this study and can be used as factors for assessment of public confidence in physicians. Factors affecting public confidence in physicians in Iran include 19 factors extracted during this study.