A Survey on the Attitude of Professors & Residents of Clinical Wards about Disclosing the Results of Diagnoses for Incurable Patients at Urmia University of Medical Sciences

Background and Objectives: One of the most important and complicated problems in medical ethics is to disclose the full truth about diagnosis of incurable diseases which leads to death, and each therapist may be encountered with it during the years of medical profession.The aim of this study was to survey on attitude of professors and residents of clinical wards to disclose the diagnosis for incurable patients leading to death.Methods: In this descriptive study, sampling was carried out by a survey. All faculty members and their residents of teaching hospitals of Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran, were surveyed as sample in 2007. Of 145 subjects, 138 responded to the questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using Pearson and Spearman correlation tests with a p≤0.05 being considered as significant.Results: In this study, the tendency to disclose the diagnosis among faculty members and residents was 64.63%. Also, there was no significant relation between age, sex, university degree, educational field, years of service of the faculty members and residents of clinical wards with the tendency for telling the truth to incurable patients.Conclusion: Final analyses revealed that the faculty members and clinical residents of different fields in terms of diagnosis disclosure do not have a definite idea. However, the majority of them agree to disclose the full truth about diagnoses.