Perioperative Privacy in the Surgical Patient

Patient privacy is defined as conducting medical procedures and evaluations related to patients' health and disease processes in confidentiality. Patient privacy means not only protecting the information and documents obtained during diagnosis and treatment processes, but also ensuring the confidentiality of the patient's physical body. The most comprehensive regulation on patient privacy in our country is Article 21 of the Patient Rights Regulation, which states that 'it is essential to respect the privacy of the patient, and any medical intervention can be performed by respecting the patient's privacy'. Similarly, the Ministry of Health published a general regulation on 'respecting patient privacy' in 2016, which emphasises that 'it has been observed that patient privacy is not sufficiently respected during examinations, examinations and treatments, especially during surgical procedures and in intensive care units, and the necessary sensitivity should be shown in this regard'. Respecting and protecting the privacy of the patient is one of the basic nursing responsibilities that must be fulfilled during health care delivery.

Both the patient's body privacy and personal information are among the basic nursing values that surgical nurses should protect and implement within the scope of the 'patient advocacy' role. Privacy violations may occur in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative processes of patients. In the preoperative period, patients who are admitted to the ward with many symptoms may share the same room with unfamiliar people in unfamiliar rooms, invasive procedures applied to them are performed in a way that they do not want others to see them, identity information and files are shared with more than one person for educational purposes, especially in university hospitals, and the presence of more than one physician or nurse in the room during physical examination may reveal privacy violations. Violations of privacy may also occur for similar reasons during the operation and during the waking process after anaesthesia, such as wearing only underwear during the operation, covering the patient during the operation, not being able to control their own private areas due to the inability to feel part of their body or their whole body due to the effect of anaesthesia.

Patients admitted to hospital for surgery are at risk of privacy violations considering the care practices brought by the surgical process. The possibility of these violations emerges as privacy anxiety in patients. It is thought that it is important to determine the privacy anxiety that occurs in the patient during the surgical process. Although many studies on patient privacy have been conducted in the literature, this study aimed to determine the perioperative privacy levels of patients undergoing surgery in urology, orthopedics, general surgery and gynaecology services.

Inclusion criteria

• Being over 18 years old
• Knowing and speaking Turkish
• No communication problems
• To have been operated in Aydın Adnan Menderes University Application and Research Hospital Hospital urology, orthopedics, general surgery and gynaecology service
• At least 24 hours since the operation
• To agree to participate in the research

Exclusion criteria

• Hospitalisation in the intensive care unit