Question

1. Assertiveness is behavior that helps you act in your own or your patient's best interest. As a nurse what are your strengths in the area of advocacy, your limitations in the area of advocacy and the steps you could take to become more assertive.

2.Give an overview of any biases you felt, or that society as a whole would feel, about a patient. What might a patient concerns be related to biases society, or personal family/friends, may have against him/her.Look at any personal biases you may have, or feel, in relation to your role as a nurse. Are you more sympathetic towards one or the other persons? How can biases change if we look at the situation from the perspective of the people involved? Can biases affect delivery of good nursing care?

3.Consider your feelings in working with a family that Ed the son did gang violence and got shot, has HIV attend and Medicaid will not fund a nursing visit if a caregiver lives in the home. His sister is the caregiver who has gotten a scholarship college so now she has declined because he needs to take care of hos brother and his brother doesn't want the hospital to tell the sister that he has HIV. Discuss any conflicts you may feel.For whom do you feel the most compassion, Ed or his sister? Explain briefly.Sometimes nurses work with patients whose decisions regarding their healthcare or lack of healthcare are what the mainstream medical and nursing professions feel are wrong decisions.Will it be difficult for you to respect each patient's decisions and still support him/her if you feel strongly the decision is wrong? Discuss why or why not briefly. Can you still advocate for patients that the system has labeled 'non-compliant' because of their choices? Discuss briefly.

Answer 1

In nursing practice assertiveness is an important element to create trustworthy relationship with patients. Assertiveness also enable nurses to build effective team building. Nurses must prudent to express their thoughts and feelings with out denying patients rights while dealing on patient advocacy. Nursing advocacy helps patient and family members to take corrective decision on patient care in line with patient wishes. Advocacy role is to be performed by health care professionals but it is adopted only by nurses as nurses are rendering wholesome care and spending more time with patients.

Nursing advocacy with assertiveness make nurses more committed and also nurses believe that this role create a good image for nurses among public. It also renders job satisfaction among nurses.  

To become more assertive in nursing practice nurse must e empathetic and strictly adhere to ethical principles. To become more assertive in patient advocacy , nurses must be good in communication skills to convince patient and family members to draw clear decisions on patient care. Experience and maturity of nurses also determine the assertive quality among nurses.

Bias is defined as personal judgement made by a person against other based on their behavior, attitude , appearance. To avoid personal bias we must surrond ourself with positive people and understand individual differences before drawing conclusions.

In nursing bias should be avoided to improve quality patient care. Nurses must render uniform quality care irrespective of color,Creed,sex,caste and cultural differences.

Confidentiality should maintained while handling patient information . In the above scenario Ed requesting nurse not to disclose the information that he has been contract HIV information to his sister is quite controversial . Before this nurse must maintain a rapport with patient to identify the reason behind hiding HIV status from his sister. Patient living with HIV need support from the family members to cope up the illness . If patient agree with disclosure of his HIV status then nurse must plan the way to communicate information to the family members.

Most of the research studies conducted on patient willingness to disclose HIV status to family members reveals that majority of client are resistance in disclosing information as they believe the family members will hate him and isolate after knowing his HIV status.