The Role of Proactive Engagement in Nursing Development

            Advocacy is one of the significant pillars of nursing practice as it promotes quality improvement and facilitates patient satisfaction and safety(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing). Therefore, nurses should be on the frontline to speak on the patients’ behalf and collaborate with other healthcare providers and patients’ family members to address healthcare concerns in any healthcare setting. Patients present with dependence, anxiety, and loss of identity. Thus, nurses advocate for the patients to satisfy the patient’s needs. Advocacy minimizes physical and psychological suffering and offers patients legal, financial, and social support (Abbasinia et al., 2020). Besides, advocacy promotes informed patient-centered care where patients can understand their conditions and make ethical decisions concerning their preferred treatment plan. Advocacy builds positive nurse-patient relationships since the patients know that the health care providers are concerned about their needs and offer optimum quality care to promote recovery. (Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

            I experienced an advocacy situation during my surgical rotation. During my shift, one nurse had difficulty feeding a patient through the nasogastric tube. The patient was restless and attempted to pull out the nasogastric despite the nurse’s attempt to calm the patient down. One hour later, I learned that the patient was Hispanic and had problems understanding English. I used an app from my phone to communicate with the patient while translating English into the patient’s native language. I explained to the patient the indications for feeding through a nasogastric tube. The patient was satisfied and agreed to take the meal. I also informed the nurse initially feeding the patient about the situation. The nurse agreed to involve the patient’s family during care and use technology like the mobile app language translation to break the language barrier.

            Lack of advocacy would have elicited adverse health outcomes in the patient. A language barrier between the nurse and the patient would have reduced care quality from poor communication. Breaking the language barrier by using technology and collaborating with patients’ family members will aid in improving communication and patient compliance to care (Al Shamsi et al., 2020). Inadequate feeding would have slowed the patient’s recovery. Proper feeding/drinking and a balanced diet are instrumental as it provides the body’s systems with energy, hydration, and nutrients required for recovery.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

References

Abbasinia, M., Ahmadi, F., & Kazemnejad, A. (2020). Patient advocacy in nursing: A concept analysis. Nursing ethics, 27(1), 141-151.

Al Shamsi, H., Almutairi, A. G., Al Mashrafi, S., & Al Kabbani, T. (2020). Implications of language barriers for healthcare: a systematic review. Oman medical journal, 35(2), e122.

Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing

Introduction:

In the realm of nursing, proactive engagement serves as a crucial instrument in sculpting the nursing field and the larger healthcare arena. Those at the forefront of healthcare provision, nurses possess a distinct vantage, enabling them to pinpoint systemic concerns, champion patients’ entitlements, and propel substantial shifts in healthcare policies and methodologies. This discourse delves into the import of proactive engagement within nursing, delving into its definitions, fundamental tenets, and the reverberations it casts on patient care and the nursing vocation overall.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Defining Proactive Engagement in Nursing:

Proactive engagement in nursing alludes to the process of endorsing and fostering the welfare, liberties, and vested interests of patients and communities. This entails effective communication with patients, families, and multidisciplinary healthcare squads, ensuring that optimal patient care is dispensed. Conversely, nursing activism encompasses more extensive endeavors to tackle structural quandaries, influence policy amendments, and challenge systemic biases impacting patient outcomes and the nursing occupation per se.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Fundamental Tenets of Proactive Engagement and Activism:

1. Patient-Centric Care: Both proactive engagement and activism hinge on the cardinal tenet of patient-centric care. Nurses act as conduits for patients who might be devoid of the wherewithal or capacity to adequately articulate their requisites and grievances. This patient-centric stance warrants healthcare determinations to be underpinned by the paramountcy of the patient’s well-being.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
2. Moral Onus: The impetus behind proactive engagement and activism in nursing is undergirded by moral obligations to safeguard patients’ entitlements, foster social equity, and uphold the apogee standards of patient care. This encompasses reverence for patients’ autonomy, confidentiality, and dignity.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
3. Policy Enmeshment: Nursing activism frequently transcends individual patient care to broach systemic predicaments. Nurses immerse themselves in policy colloquies, striving to contour healthcare statutes and legislations that reverberate across patient outcomes, nursing practice, and the overarching healthcare fabric.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
4. Interdisciplinary Synergy: Effective proactive engagement and activism entail concerted collaboration with sundry healthcare professionals, policymakers, patient advocacy cohorts, and community enclaves. Through this synergy, nurses harness assorted perspectives to foment more holistic and efficacious transformations.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Implications on Patient Care:

1. Fostering Empowerment: Proactive engagement emboldens patients, affording them comprehension of their health status, treatment avenues, and prerogatives within the healthcare labyrinth. Empowered patients are more predisposed to astutely adjudicate on their healthcare trajectory.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
2. Augmenting Communication: Nurses championing patients facilitate ameliorated dialogues amongst patients, families, and healthcare assemblages. Lucid communication enhances care coordination, truncates medical fallacies, and augments the global patient contentment quotient.
3. Mitigating Disparities: Nursing activism assuages healthcare disparages embedded in health determinants such as race, socioeconomic strata, and gender. By propounding impartial access to care and contesting prejudiced practices, nurses make inroads toward mitigating healthcare disparities.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Impact on the Nursing Calling:

1. Elevating the Vocation: Proactive engagement and activism elevate the nursing profession, casting nurses in the roles of trailblazers and transformative agents. This dispels conventional preconceptions, accentuating the ineluctable function nurses play in healthcare.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
2. Policy Prowess: Via activism, nurses can shape policy junctures dictating nursing practice, staffing quotas, workplace milieu, and patient care benchmarks. Their collective articulation wields the clout to foment substantial strides in healthcare frameworks.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
3. Professional Enrichment: Participation in proactive engagement and activism amplifies nurses’ professional maturation. This foments perpetual enlightenment about healthcare policies, ethical deliberations, and the expansive sociopolitical tapestry of healthcare.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Exemplars of Nursing Proactive Engagement and Activism:

1. Safeguarding Staffing Standards: Nursing associations champion judicious staffing quotas to warrant nurses bear tenable workloads, thereby conducing to enhanced patient care and curbing nurse attrition.
2. Facilitating Healthcare Reach: Nurses spearhead drives to promulgate affordable and attainable healthcare for all, advocating for augmented insurance inclusivity and community health initiatives.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)
3. Patient Entitlements Charter: Nurses educate patients about their entitlements within the healthcare sphere, conferring them the acumen to actively partake in decision-making and exercise agency in their care blueprints.
4. Mental Health Cognizance: Nursing activists raise cognizance regarding mental health predicaments, dismantling stigmas, and advocating for enriched mental healthcare reservoirs and bolster.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Conclusion:

Proactive engagement and activism constitute integral strands of the nursing tapestry, mirroring its dedication to patient-centric care, ethical duties, and the amplification of healthcare systems. By advocating for patients’ prerogatives and catalyzing systemic transmutations, nurses yield their agency to chisel a more just, patient-oriented, and streamlined healthcare landscape. As the healthcare arena evolves, the role of nursing proactive engagement and activism will endure as keystones of affirmative metamorphosis.(Comprehensive Essay Example on Advocacy and Activism in Nursing)

Reference

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/