A comparison of the importance of patient educational programs in the viewpoint of nurses and patients

Introduction: Patient education has many advantages such as increase in the clients' satisfaction, improvement of life quality, decrease in the side effects of the disease and treatment expenditure, and decrease in the patients' readmission. The main objective of this study was to compare the importance and performance of patient educational programs in the viewpoint of nurses and patients. Material and Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, all the nurses employed in Fatemeh Zahra hospital of Najafabad (n=90) and 120 patients were selected through convenience sampling method and recruited to the study. Data were gathered using self-designed questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive and analytical statistics (Mann Whitney U). Results: The findings showed that there were significant differences between the viewpoint of the nurses and patients about the importance and performance of patient educational programs (P