Patient advocacy has been claimed as a new role for professional nurses and many codes of ethics for nurses state that they act as patient advocates. Nursing education is faced with the challenge of preparing nurses for this role. In this article we describe the results of a study that considered the tendencies of a cohort of nursing students at the Kocaeli University School of Nursing to act as advocates and to respect patients’ rights, and how their capacities to do (...) so changed (or not) as a result of their nursing education. This longitudinal study used a questionnaire consisting of 10 statements relating to patient care. It was performed both at the start (1998) and at the end (2002) of the nursing training. At the beginning of their course 77 students participated; in the study. After four years, only 55 students participated, the reason for this drop in number being unknown. The questions asked nurses if patients should have: the right to receive health care; the right to participate in the decision-making process about their treatment; the right always to be told the truth; and the right to have access to their own medical records. They were also asked: if quality of life should be a criterion for discontinuing treatment; if patients have the right to die and the right to refuse treatment; if patients should be assisted to die or helped to undergo active euthanasia; and if severely disabled newborn babies should be allowed to die. The student nurses demonstrated considerable insight into contemporary nursing issues and were ready to act as patient advocates. Professional responsibility demands that good nurses advocate strongly for patients’ choices. (shrink)

A significant development for conducting research on patient rights has been made in Iran over the past decade. This study is conducted in order to review and analyze the previous studies that have been made, so far, concerning patient rights in Iran. This is a comprehensive review study conducted by searching the Iranian databases, Scientific Information Database, Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology, Iran Medex and Google using the Persian equivalent of keywords for ‘awareness', ‘attitude’, and ‘patient rights'. (...) For pertinent Iranian papers published in English, scientific databases PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched using the keyword ‘patient rights' and ‘Iran’. A total of 41 Persian and five English articles were found for these keywords, only 26 of which fulfilled the objective of our study. The increasing number of papers published indicates that from 1999 onwards, this subject has begun to draw the attention of Iranian researchers in a progressive fashion and Iranian papers in English have also been compiled and published in international sources. (shrink)