Question

Discuss the importance of advocacy as it pertains to patient care. What is the nurse's role in patient advocacy? Describe a situation in which you were involved with patient advocacy. Explain what the advocacy accomplished for the patient, and what the repercussions would have been if the patient would not have had an advocate.

Answer 1

1. Importance of advocacy in patient care

Patient advocacy can be defined as an area of specialization in health care or patient care concerned with advocacy for patients, survivors or care givers.

A patient advocate can be an individual who directly provide services to individual patients. Patient advocates are the people who provide a voice to the patients. And these voice can be on health care related problems, any information to public, political and regulatory world, health care providers, educational world and the medical and pharmaceutical research communities.

It is very important to have patient advocates because they play many roles and activities such as

1. Patient rights

2. Matters of privacy and confidentiality and informed consent

3. Patient representation

4. Awareness building

5. Support and education of patients

Patient advocacy is very important while providing patient care because a patient advocate is the supporter, partner, friend cheerleader and many other roles. So to get the best services by the patient with all his /her rights a patient advocate is necessary.

2. Nurses role in patient advocacy

Advocacy is an unavoidable role of a nurse because nurses are the one who interacts with the patients more than any other healthcare provider. The nurses always promotes advocates and protects the rights, health and safety of the patient. The various roles of nurses while performing as patient advocate are as follows

A) preserving human dignity - in many situations the patients and their families will be confused and worried. Then an experienced nurse can help them to go through the unfamiliar situation and communicate better. The nurses can explain about the various services, tests and procedures adhering to privacy laws and the culture and ethnicity.

B) patient equality - nurses ensure that all patients are treated with equality and equal access to care should be provided to everyone. Everyone deserves same attention and compassion irrespective of their religion, caste, social or economic status, personal attributes and nature of health problems.

C) freedom from suffering - nurses make sure that the patients are not suffering in any ways. Usually the sufferings happen in two ways either due to the illness or because of the problems caused by health care system. So it's a nurses responsibility to alleviate the sufferings of the patient.

3. A situation which I was recently involved in patient advocacy

I had a patient Mrs. X, 70 years old and she was very happy when someone spends time with her. I used to talk to her and she told me about herself and her family and also daily life. One day when I took away her lunch tray I noticed that she had not touched her egg scrambled. I noticed that everyday she got it in her tray but she never touches that. I asked Mrs. X that whether she told anyone about this and she said yes countless times. I felt very bad and I approached the charge nurse and clinical instructor and they told we could substitute egg with something else. Even after that, I saw the same thing happening in the following weeks too. So one day I decided to meet the dietician and spoke to her about Mrs. X 's preference and immediately she changed the menu. And for the first time in Mrs. X' s lunch tray came without egg. She looks happy. This experience taught me what is patient advocacy. To become a patient's voice is not easy but being a nurse I learned a lesson that sometimes being the voice of a patient is necessary. By taking a stand and changing something as simple as her lunch, I could help Mrs. X to feel more in control of her life. Also to avoid any kind of food allergy or complications.

If I had not taken that stand she would have suffered by tolerating something she dislikes and as I mentioned before alleviating suffering is a part of patient advocacy. She sacrificed her happy meals because she didn't get her autonomy.

I also learned that to become a true patient advocate you will have to take a few minutes out of your day getting to know your patient, their likes and dislikes, how they are feeling and how they would like to feel.