Ways Nurses Can Advocate for Patients

What examples have you seen of nurses advocating for the health of populations, including through workplace or political action?

Nursing Advocacy on Health of Populations

Advocacy is the most important nurses’ role in healthcare to ensure patient care as well as delivery of the services to the patients.  Nurses therefore have a responsibility of promoting equality on patients, preserving the dignity of human beings, as well as providing freedom to the suffering patients (Girouard & Bailey, 2017). The nurses also play a great role in advocating for all the vulnerable and marginalized populations to get equal treatments to the privileged population. The examples of nursing advocacy in patients therefore include double checking for errors, educating the population and connecting patients to resources.Ways Nurses Can Advocate for Patients

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            The healthcare professionals are prone to making errors when handling patients due to workload or ignorance. It is therefore the role of a nurse to catch up, fix the errors, flag all the conflicting information and to oversight all the mistakes done by other healthcare workers (Lapkin et al, 2020).  In addition, the nurses should read all the documents provided to the patient, discuss all the contradicting information with the doctors, pharmacists and other nurses for clarification. Therefore, the nurses should ensure that all the patients leave the hospital with the right diagnosis and treatment.

Secondly, the nurses advocate for the health of populations through patient education. Educating the patients on how to manage their conditions through taking the right diet and the right medication will improve the quality of the patient’s life thus promoting health population (Girouard & Bailey, 2017). In addition, the nurses advise the patients living with chronic conditions including renal failure, diabetes, hypertension and cancer on the best ways to manage their conditions. The patients undergoing treatment like chemotherapy are also advised by the nurses on how to take their medication especially the anti-nausea drugs in effective ways thus promoting the health of the populations.

According to Ross and Saxe Zerden (2020), nurses play a big role in advising the patients on where to source important resources they require for support both in the hospital and outside the hospital. The nurses conduct researches on the resources that are beneficial to specific conditions the population is suffering from. Through networks provided by the nurses patients are able to getter better therapeutic resources that improve their health. As such, the nurses also share information about transportation, financial support and free medical camps with the populations thus promoting their health.Ways Nurses Can Advocate for Patients

References

Girouard, S., & Bailey, N. (2017). ACEs implications for nurses, nursing education, and nursing practice. Academic Pediatrics, 17(7), S16-S17.

Lapkin, S., Levett‐Jones, T., Chenoweth, L., & Johnson, M. (2016). The effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce medication administration errors: a synthesis of findings           from systematic reviews. Journal of nursing management, 24(7), 845-858.

Ross, A. M., & de Saxe Zerden, L. (2020). Prevention, health promotion, and social work:           Aligning health and human service systems through a workforce for health. American          Journal of Public Health, 110(S2), S186-S190.Ways Nurses Can Advocate for Patients