Assessment of nurses' compliance with patients' rights in South Africa : a scoping review

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Compliance with Patients’ Rights by nurses is a crucial determinant of how well healthcare services are provided. Nurses are responsible for upholding Patients’ Rights because they spend so much time with patients. Therefore, it is essential to continuously assess nurses’ compliance with Patients’ Rights in healthcare institutions. OBJECTIVES: To outline the breadth and type of existing research on nurses’ compliance with Patients’ Rights as well as to pinpoint any gaps in the body of existing knowledge. METHODS: A scoping review search was done in six electronic databases. For eligibility, articles written in English and focusing on nurses’ compliance with Patients’ Rights in South Africa (SA) were checked and evaluated. Data were taken from eligible study materials in order to compile, evaluate the quality, summarize, and create a narrative summary of the results. RESULTS: The literature collected was 1158 records from six data bases, after deleting 239 duplicates, 919 records remained. A total of 891 records were excluded using title and abstract of the studies. Fifteen articles were included in the final analysis. Four articles were quantitative studies, ten qualitative and one a mixed method. The included studies focused on six Patients’ Rights listed in the Patients’ Rights Charter, which consist of 12 Patients’ Rights. CONCLUSION: Nurses’ compliance with Patients’ Rights is inconsistent and there are limited studies on nurses’ compliance with all Patients’ Rights in SA. More studies are required in future, as seen by the included studies’ inconsistent findings.