Patient satisfaction has become an indicator and a standard part of evaluation of the health care system, despite its complex nature and multiple determinants of patient satisfaction. Health care now a day is a major service area for the people, thus it should satisfy its customers. There have been different mechanisms to enhance patient satisfaction. Adhere to services on patients' preferences, meeting expectations and health care practice based on patients' rights were among others. Making

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... lth care service more congruent with patients' preferences, expectations and patients' rights practice can be achieved through measurement and feedback of patients' satisfaction and interventions that address patient concerns. Even countries have guaranteed patients' rights to process for resolving dissatisfactions with health care providers. The implementation of patients' rights can increase patient satisfaction, as well as achieve equal distribution of responsibility between the patients, and health service providers. Thus research is needed to move forward with the structural changes regarding patients' value judgments in the health care service. Studies on patients' preference to use health care, patient expectation and patient rights practice as an important factor for patient satisfaction care rendered at health care facilities in the developing country context like Ethiopia are often neglected in health service researches and rarely subjected to scientific inquiry. Objectives: The study aimed to examine patients' preference, expectations, and the lived experience of patients on patient rights practice as a factor of patient satisfaction at public hospitals in Amhara Region, northern Ethiopia. Methods: The study was carried out in nine public hospitals of Amhara Region of Ethiopia. It was designed as a mixed method study in which both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses were employed. About 1005 participants in the out and in patient departments of general, medical and surgical depa [...]