Ethical predictability of patient safety in Iranian hospitals.

Background: Receiving safe health care services is among the first rights of patients. Ethical predictability is influential to identify the patient safety concerns in hospitals.

Objective: This study aimed to ascertain and compare ethical predictability of patient safety in selected hospitals in Mazandaran Province in Iran.

Methods: A cross-sectional design was applied in the current study. By applying the multistage method for sampling, the statistical population consisted of clinical units of selected public, social security, and private hospitals. Out of the 18 public hospitals, five teaching hospitals, nine private and five social security hospitals, one hospital was randomly selected in Mazandaran Province from each cluster. In total, 938 patients participated in the study. Data entry and analysis was carried out by SPSS version 22 software.

Results: The results showed that ethical predictability in social security hospitals was higher than the results in private and public hospitals (p < 0.001). In addition, among the selected dimensions of ethical predictability of patient safety in the selected hospitals, blood management was the highest dimension. Safe drug management, error management, infection control, and safe clinical services were the middle priorities and management and leadership of patient safety had the lowest mean in the ethical predictability of patient safety in the selected hospitals in the province.

Conclusion: Identifying the factors causing ethical predictability in order to improve patient safety and service quality, is of great help to managers and authorities in the field of health services. Such awareness helps managers to consider these factors in all decision making processes.