Respecting patients' rights is a fundamental aspect of providing quality healthcare. The present investigation attempts to explore the awareness among patients about their rights in a coastal township in India. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was carried out among 215 patients admitted to the wards of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Mangalore. Awareness among patients regarding their rights varied for various issues and ranged between 48.4 and 87.4 %. Awareness about patients' rights was independent of gender, socio-economic and educational status. Doctors were found to be the most common source of information for patient's about their rights in the study. Doctors must conform to the relevant legislations and involve patients in all aspects of healthcare. There is a need to increase awareness among patients about their rights to ensure informed decisions and better health care services.

To generate a preliminary version of a novel risk score to predict the need for invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) in patients with COVID-19. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of patients >18 years-of-age with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 admitted between March 15-April 15, 2020 to a tertiary-care center. Demographic, laboratory, clinical, and outcome information were recorded, using a standard data-collection format. RESULTS: The cohort included 265 subjects (mean age 59.3 AE16.4 years, 55.1% male) and 54 (20.4%) required invasive MV. Significant between-group univariate results, based on the need for invasive MV, were used in multiple-regression analysis. Admission heart rate (HR) (OR 1.032 [CI 1.013-1.015]; p<0.001), SpO2/FIO2 (S/F) ratio (OR .619 [CI .463-.829]; p=0.001), and any positive initial troponin (TnI) (OR 4.18 [CI 1.93-9.036]; p<0.001] independently predicted the need for invasive MV. The best cutoff points for the variables HR and S/F ratio were also determined: HR >101.5 BPM (AUC 0.686, 68.5% sensitivity & 66.4% specificity) and S/F ratio <4.4 (AUC 0.714, 72.2% sensitivity & 61.6% specificity). The overall model showed good calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow = 6.3; p=0.39) and predictive ability (AUC = .80). Patients with a single, positive variable had an invasive MV risk = 15.4%, but this increased to 29% with 2 variables and 60.5% (p<0.001) with the presence of all 3. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study provides insight into early factors related to patient acuity and the use of medical resources. Thresholds for 3 common clinical variables-HR, S/F ratio and TnIpredicted the need for invasive MV with good accuracy and provide an easily-applied scoring system to determine risk. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: We developed a simple, novel risk score to quantify the need for invasive MV in COVID-19 patients, with preliminary testing showing the 3 components had good predictive ability.

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