The experiences of psychiatric inpatients: Do psychiatric inpatients judge fairly?

Introduction: 
Points of view and judgment of patients about the quality of received care are significant factors which affect the degree of their satisfaction with health care systems and improving the procedures and outcomes by managers.

Methods:A qualitative study was carried out at eight acute psychiatric wards in three teaching hospitals in Tehran, Iran. 28 patients whose symptoms and signs had subsided and who had stayed in hospital at least 7 days or previously experienced being hospitalized at a psychiatric ward were interviewed using purposive sampling and semi structured open-ended individual in-depth interview.
Interviews went on until it was concluded that information was saturated. The data were then coded and classified on the basis of the area and subject.

Findings:
In total, 28 interviews were done with both male and female, at different ages, and with different education level and job positions. The findings of the study included several different areas some of which are as follow: Lack of generalization of what was observed to all staff, lack of overshadowing other things due to great dissatisfaction with something, considering a comprehensive look and trying to grade the quality of care, separation of different aspects of care quality from each other, not blaming the staff in conditions patients are not aware of the rules in a special case, using "I don't know" in appropriate situations, lack of expecting the affairs to be perfect but expecting the problems to be investigated, considering the situation (such as the shortage of nurses in proportion of patients, unavoidability of some problems, …), considering various reasons for affairs not being done in time or correctly.

 Conclusion:
The findings indicate that psychiatric inpatients are quite good at judging fairly about received services and their points of view about what needs correction/ promotion is reliable for the quality management.