Compliance to Clinical Ethics and Associated Factors Among Health Professionals Working in Hospitals of Southwest and West Shoa Zone Oromia Region Ethiopia 2019

Background: Medical ethics can be applied to various professions in order to define a level of responsibility of performance of those in the field. Every patient has a right to be treated with respect as an individual. Methods: A facility based cross-sectional study design using mixed methods of data collection was used for the study done on 305 health professionals in hospitals of southwest and west shoa zone of Oromia, Ethiopia between April 03 and May 04, 2019. Pretested self-administered structured questionnaire was used for quantitative data collection and semi-structured interview guide used for qualitative study. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis was used identify variables associated with outcomes. Findings were presented descriptively by frequency tables and graphs. Ethical clearance was obtained from Health Institute of Jimma University. Result: The study indicated that only 36.4% of health professionals do have good compliance to clinical ethics. Health professionals in age group of 30-34 were 2.174 times more compliant than when compared to age group 25-29.(AOR=2.174 and 95% CI=(1.147, 4.121). Professionally, midwives were 3.195 times more compliant than general medical practitioners (AOR: 3.195, 95% CI: (1.075, 9.496).The result related to attitude indicated that health professionals having favorable attitude towards clinical ethics were 68% less likely to have good compliance to clinical ethics when compared with their counterparts (AOR: 0.322, 95% CI: (0.180, 0.573). Conclusion: Health professionals' compliance to clinical ethics was found to be poor. Age, type of profession and attitude of health professionals affected their compliance towards ethical principles. Qualitative data has also support the finding. Thus, it is recommended that responsible bodies should strive to enhance standard of the health professionals focusing on junior and older categories of health professionals.