Adherence to patient rights in the daily practice of paramedics: The importance of age and professional experience

Background and objective. Patient rights protect the dignity, autonomy, privacy and safety of people receiving healthcare. This study assessed paramedics’ self-reported knowledge of patient rights and aspects of their implementation and examined associations with age and professional experience. Materials and methods. The study was a nationwide online cross-sectional survey conducted in Poland from March to October 2025 among 180 paramedics. Participation was voluntary and based on self-selection. The non-validated 38-item questionnaire assessed sociodemographic characteristics, declarative familiarity with legal regulations, self-rated knowledge, information practices, perceived responsibility, and observed violations. Associations were analysed using chi-square and Kruskal-Wallis tests at α=0.05. Results. Longer professional experience was associated with having read the Act on Patient Rights (p=0.026), higher selfrated knowledge (p<0.001), and perceived responsibility for informing patients (p=0.0017). Age was associated with self-rated knowledge (p<0.001), information practices (p=0.029), perceived responsibility (p=0.001), and reported frequency of observing patient-rights violations (p=0.035). The association between professional experience and observed violations was not statistically significant (p=0.065). Conclusions. Basic awareness of legal instruments did not differ significantly by age or professional experience. The study findings support systematic training in the patient rights. Given the exploratory design, voluntary online recruitment, non-representative sample, and non-validated questionnaire, the study results should be interpreted cautiously.