The opinions of patients and their nurses about the effects on privacy of the nursing care practices in patients having surgery

This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted for the purpose ofdetermining the opinions of patients and nurses about the effects of nursing careon privacy of the patients having surgery at Baskent University Ankara Hospital.The sample of the study included 102 adult patients admitted to surgicalwards and had been surgically operated and 47 nurses who worked at these wardsat this hospital. The data were collected between March 15 and May 15, 2008 byusing two questionnaires which had been prepared by the researcher according toinformation in related literature and included questions to determine the nurses?and patients? opinions about the effects of nursing care on privacy of the patients.Qquantitative data obtained from the research were analyzed using theSPSS program with percentage and Chi square test and qualitative data wereanalyzed by content analysis.As a result of the data analysis it was determined that the majority of thepatients thought that their privacy was shown a good level of respect although theyhave some concerns about maintenance of informational privacy. It wasdetermined that the privacy definitions of both nurses and patients were similar andcontaining physical, psychological, social and informational dimensions of theprivacy concept. Majority of the patients have some expectations aboutenvironmental requirements such as private / single room for protecting theirprivacy. Their expectations from nurses were to be shown autonomy and respectto their privacy, to allow them to participate in all processes besides to showattention physical privacy.The nurses concluded that they faced difficulties in ensuring andmaintaining patients? privacy in the hospital environment because of physicalconditions beyond their control, such as not having private rooms,curtains/screens to use between patients? beds and not having control overvisitors entering, as well as having heavy workloads, inadequate numbers ofnurses and limited time.Recommendations were made based on the findings obtained.Key words: Privacy, confidentiality, nursing practices, surgical patients, patientrights