Privacy, Confidentiality and Facility Criteria in Designing Emer-gency Departments of the Teaching Hospitals of Shahid Be heshti University of Medical Sciences in 2007

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the design of emergency depart -ments regarding to the patientsa€ and staff's privacy, confidentiality and facilities in gen -eral teaching hospitals. Methods: Emergency departments of all the general teaching hospitals of Shahid Be -heshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran were evaluated in 2007 through both direct observation and interview with hospital authorities, and staff. Rele -vant criteria were studied by a 27-item questionnaire including 19 items for facili -ties and 7 items for privacy and confidentiality. Extent of emergency depart -ments was the last common criterion. Data analysis has been done using t-test and descriptive statistics when appropriate. SPSS Software version 16 was used to facilitate quantitative analysis. Results: Eleven out of nineteen criteria (58%) for the facilities were not found in the emergency departments. Privacy criteria had an overall partially more accept -able situation. Only one criterion of privacy and confidentiality was negative for all the emergency departments. It was calm gynecologic and delivery room with spe -cific toilet. The mean was 469.6 (SD= 96) square meters for existing extent of emer -gency departments and 1461.6 (SD= 262.1) square meters for the ideal val -ues (P< 0.01). Conclusion: Privacy, confidentiality and enough facilities should be considered in designing of teaching hospitals for both stuff and patients. Most of them need to be reconstructed based on new national standards.