The Readiness of Hospitals to Deploy the ISO 14001 System: A Case Study of the Educational Medical Hospitals of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Standards of quality have been a huge success for organizations around the world. Hospitals need to establish standards, especially environmental ones. Hence, the codification of ISO 14001 is a necessity for hospitals. The aim of this study was to conduct a survey on the preparation of the teaching hospitals of the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences to implement ISO 14001. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study based on a questionnaire with internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.787) to assess manager and staff attitudes toward the establishment of ISO 14001. The data was collected from hospitals at the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. There were also questions on environmental standards. The guidelines for environment management system auditing were used to assess the general conditions. Then the data were analyzed by the SPSS software.  Results: The mean age of the 250 people in the study was 32.52 ± 6.98 years with an age range of 21 to 55 years. Females made up 64.6% of the participants in this study and 35.4% were male. The relationship between the knowledge and the variables of work experience, education, age, and sex was performed, and the Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) showed that the knowledge of the females was less than that of the males (p = 0.01). Based on the current situation with the standards, hospitals were classified. Conclusion: The application of quality management systems (e.g. ISO) can be due to the development of standards and the modification of health centers. Thus, they may promote the quality of services, reduce costs, and raise the level of public health.