Social responsibility of the hospitals in Isfahan city, Iran: Results from a cross-sectional survey.

BACKGROUND Changes in modern societies develop the perception that the external environment is essential in organization's practices, especially in the way they deal with aspects such as human rights, community needs, market demands and environmental interests. These issues are usually under the umbrella of the concept of social responsibility. Given the importance of this concept in the context of health care delivery, suggesting a new paradigm in hospital governance, the aim of this study was to measure the social responsibility in hospitals. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was employed to collect data from a sample of 946 hospital staff of Isfahan city. Data was obtained by structured and valid self-administrated questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive and analytic statistics using SPSS. RESULTS The mean score of hospitals' social responsibility was 3.0 compared with the justified range from 1.0 to 5.0. Results showed that there was a significant relationship between social responsibility score and hospitals' ownership (public or private). Also, there was no significant relationship between social responsibility and type of hospital specialty. CONCLUSION It is recommended that hospital managers develop and apply appropriate policies and strategies to improve their hospitals' social responsibility level, especially through concentrating on their staff's working environment.