Operationalization of patients' rights in Sudan: Quantifying nurses' knowledge.
BACKGROUND
Promoting patients' rights is essential for defining the standards of clinical services within a country. Given their responsibilities, nurses can be the primary target for research to investigate the issue of patients' rights within a healthcare system. As such, assessing the knowledge of nurses about patients' rights is an essential step toward improving the quality of healthcare in limited resource settings like Sudan.


OBJECTIVES
We aimed to assess the level of knowledge about patients' rights among the nursing staff at Friendship Teaching Hospital in Sudan.


METHODS
This hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out at the Friendship Teaching Hospital in Sudan. We surveyed the totality of nurses (95) at the hospital using an amended survey. The data were analyzed in SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics.


ETHICAL CONSIDERATION
The study was approved by the Research Unit of Khartoum Ministry of Health and the Hospital administration. All respondents gave verbal consent prior to participating in the study.


RESULTS
Only 48.4% of the participants knew about the existence of the Sudanese Charter of patients' rights. Nonetheless, our analysis found that 65.8% of nurses had acceptable level of knowledge (scored more than 75% of the total knowledge score) of patients' rights, and none of the participant scored less than 50% of the total knowledge score. Finally, we found no statistical association between the knowledge score and demographic data, educational level, whether the participant knows about the existence of the Charter or not and a number of other factors.


CONCLUSION
Nurses' lack of knowledge about the existence of the Sudanese Charter of patients' rights adopted in 2009 rights confirms the need for further efforts by Ministry of Health to promote the document. Furthermore, further research is needed to investigate the disconnect between nurses' lack of knowledge about the existence of the charter and their awareness of the rights within the charter as well as the actual implementation of rights.
['Abdalla|Salma M|SM|https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5474-4521', 'Mahgoub|Esra Aa|EA|', 'Abdelgadir|Jihad|J|', 'Elhassan|Nahla|N|', 'Omer|Zulfa|Z|']
D000328:Adult D002983:Clinical Competence D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies D005260:Female D006806:Human Rights D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D009726:Nurses D013397:Sudan D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Sudan nurses knowledge Awareness Sudanese charter of patients’ rights patients’ rights