privacy, confidentiality and facility criteria in designing emer-gency departments of the teaching hospitals of shahid beâ¬heshti university of medical sciences in 2007

background: this study aimed to evaluate the design of emergency departâ­ments regarding to the patients’ and staff's privacy, confidentiality and facilities in genâ­eral teaching hospitals. methods: emergency departments of all the general teaching hospitals of shahid beâ­heshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran were evaluated in 2007 through both direct observation and interview with hospital authorities, and staff. releâ­vant criteria were studied by a 27-item questionnaire including 19 items for faciliâ­ties and 7 items for privacy and confidentiality. extent of emergency departâ­ments was the last common criterion. data analysis has been done using t -test and descriptive statistics when appropriate. spss software version 16 was used to facilitate quantitative analysis. results: eleven out of nineteen criteria (58%) for the facilities were not found in the emergency departments. privacy criteria had an overall partially more acceptâ­able situation. only one criterion of privacy and confidentiality was negative for all the emergency departments. it was calm gynecologic and delivery room with speâ­cific toilet. the mean was 469.6 (sd= 96) square meters for existing extent of emerâ­gency departments and 1461.6 (sd= 262.1) square meters for the ideal valâ­ues ( p conclusion: privacy, confidentiality and enough facilities should be considered in designing of teaching hospitals for both stuff and patients. most of them need to be reconstructed based on new national standards.