Reference no: EM133732852

Advocacy in Nursing Practice

Nursing advocacy takes many forms and is meant to protect and promote the rights, health, and overall well-being of patients. When carried out well, nursing advocacy is an added value-sometimes an ingredient that can improve patient outcomes. Whether at the bedside or in health policy, nursing advocacy is an expression of the ethical principles that govern our work and an acknowledgment of the right every person has to health and health care. Even more, it is a call to action for nurses as patient advocates to be five stars, not three stars, and to push for not just any old health care but for very good health care-some have called it the pursuit of health justice

Advocating for Patient-Centered Care

The practice of nursing must be focused on patient-centered care to be effective. Such care leaves nothing to chance, making it much more likely that the patient's needs and wants will be correctly understood and accurately acted upon (Okoro et al., 2023). Advocating for patient-centered care takes many forms, but one form it often takes is that of advocating for ensuring that patients have all necessary information allowing them to make fully informed, autonomous decisions. Key among these forms of information giving is the giving of detailed information about the risks and benefits of any potential or planned treatment options.

One more instance is the act of creating customized care plans that take into account individual patients' likes, dislikes, and cultural backgrounds. For example, I had a patient who followed the Muslim faith and also had diabetes. This patient, like many others, considered our health system woefully unaware of their spiritual and cultural needs (Hickmann et al., 2022). They recognized that the Western healthcare system was not fashioned for people with such needs. While working with them to manage their disease, it became clear to me the kind of cultural competency healthcare professionals need to practice if we are to assure the patients we are here to serve.

Promoting Health Equity

Nursing practice pays significant attention to another important area: achieving health equity. This may be the most critical and potentially controversial part of the "care" function of nursing, as it often involves the "payment" part of healthcare. Advocacy is central to this effort, even as the term "advocacy" is controversial in itself. From a human rights perspective, advocacy doesn't just make suggestions or recommendations on behalf of patients; it is also a declaration that people have the right to access quality care, regardless of their socioeconomic position, gender, or other social determinants.

I also worked with the hospital's financial aid office, looking into additional ways the patient could get the help they needed to pay for their treatment if they were eligible. On another point, the language barrier is tough to break in health care. Many patients, not just at Northwestern, do not speak English as their first language, restricting their access to me as their doctor in any meaningful way. Since this is the U.S., we've been able to get by with my very basic Spanish, but if we can help people understand the medical jargon using words they know, then maybe the patient will be more likely to ask questions and stay engaged in their healthcare plan.