Importance of nursing advocacy
Nurses have long held the role of advocacy for their patients as a concept of protecting them while in care.
Healthcare Equality for All Patients
As Water et al. (2016) posited, nurses have a responsibility to ensure every patient receives quality treatment despite their race, religion, socioeconomic status, medical conditions, among other categorization.
Alleviation of Suffering
As a patient’s advocate, nurses have the responsibility to be concerned about their patient’s suffering. They need to assess each patient and identify any discomfort from them (Davoodvand et al., 2016). Pain can either be in the form of injury, illness, diagnoses or the treatment of the defined condition. Nurses also have a responsibility to address requirements such as pain management reducing physical, psychological or mental suffering.
Promotion of Human Dignity
Nurse’s advocacy is vital as a nurse always abides by patients’ needs, and nurses can discuss private matters cautiously.
Nurse’s role in patient advocacy;
Nurses are better placed on acquiring information the patients about their needs and preference as well as get feedback from other disciplines concerning the patients’ situation. They should, therefore, provide information to the patients precisely, and in ways, they can understand, giving all available options if applicable. Besides, nurses should respect the diverse needs of the patients and allow them to make their own choices (Akın & Kurşun, 2020).
A situation in which required patient’s advocacy
As a nurse, I encounter many situations that require advocacy, and among them, in one incident, my patient was not able to pay for his prescription drugs. With my knowledge on a variety of resources in our facility that can be useful to the patient, I was able to advocate for the patient to be given a subsidized quality drug from our pharmacy. By practising my nursing advocacy, I was useful in ensuring that the patient gets his prescription drug at an affordable price; thus saving him an extra cost. Besides, helping him get a quality drug at a lower price from our pharmacy was crucial in protecting him from buying counterfeit drugs which are readily available at a lower cost.
References
Akın, B., & Kurşun, Ş. (2020, June). Perception and opinion of nursing faculties regarding
advocacy role: A qualitative research. In Nursing Forum. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nuf.12480. Accessed 20 August 2020.
Davoodvand, S., Abbaszadeh, A., & Ahmadi, F. (2016). Patient advocacy from the clinical
nurses’ viewpoint: a qualitative study. Journal of medical ethics and the history of medicine, 9.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958925/. Accessed 20 August 2020.
Water, T., Ford, K., Spence, D., & Rasmussen, S. (2016). Patient advocacy by nurses–past,
present and future. Contemporary Nurse, 52(6), 696-709. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10376178.2016.1235981. Accessed 20 August 2020.