Advocacy as a Professional Behavior
Tamara Berghout
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate how nurses’ professional behaviors influence individuals, nurses, and patients.
- Analyze advocacy from the perspective of a professional nurse leader.
This week, we will review how every nurse is responsible for client, professional, and personal advocacy and examine the powerful influence nurses can have on local, state, and federal healthcare policies that affect the nation’s health and the profession of nursing.
Advocacy
What do you think of when you hear the word “advocacy”? Advocacy is defined as the act or process of pleading for, supporting, or recommending a cause or course of action[1]. Advocacy may be demonstrated for individuals, groups, organizations, communities, society, or policy issues. Advocacy is one of the ANA’s Standards of Professional Performance. The Standards of Professional Performance are “authoritative statements of the actions and behaviors that all registered nurses, regardless of role, population, specialty, and setting, are expected to perform competently.”[2][/footnote] See the following list to read the competencies associated with the ANA’s Advocacy Standard of Professional Performance.
Competencies of ANA’s Advocacy Standard of Professional Performance
- Champion the voice of the health care consumer.
- Recommend appropriate levels of care, timely and appropriate transitions, and allocation of resources to optimize outcomes.
- Promote safe care of health care consumers, safe work environments, and sufficient resources.
- Participate in health care initiatives on behalf of the health care consumer and the system(s) where nursing happens.
- Demonstrate a willingness to address persistent, pervasive systemic issues.
- Inform the political arena about the role of nurses and the vital components necessary for nurses and nursing to provide optimal care delivery.
- Empower all members of the health care team to include the health care consumer in care decisions, including limitation of treatment and end-of-life care.
- Embrace diversity, equity, inclusivity, health promotion, and health care for individuals of diverse geographic, cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, and spiritual backgrounds across the life span.
- Develop policies that improve care delivery and access for underserved and vulnerable populations.
- Promote policies, regulations, and legislation at the local, state, and national levels to improve health care access and delivery of health care.
- Consider societal, political, economic, and cultural factors to address social determinants of health.
- Role model advocacy behavior.
- Address the urgent need for a diverse and inclusive workforce as a strategy to improve outcomes related to the social determinants of health and inequities in the health care system.
- Advance policies, programs, and practices within the health care environment that maintain, sustain, and restore the environment and natural world.
- Contribute to pr