Aspects of Advocacy as a Nursing Role Essay

Aspects of Advocacy as a Nursing Role Essay

Discussion

Leaders in the healthcare setting are the drivers of change in the workplace. In this regard, their roles as employees’ advocates are manifested through addressing teams’ and individual performance and needs related to care. Indeed, at the individual level, nurse leaders advocate for their employees “to operationalize CDC guidelines and support, protect, educate, and empower staff” (Stamps et al., 2021, p. 159). Moreover, nurse leaders’ advocacy entails “the protection of resources that are significant to staff, including education assistance, shared governance, and staffing models” to ensure a favorable work environment and culture (Bergstedt & Wei, 2020, p. 50). At the team level, leaders should promote employee rights and ensure their opportunities by advocating for organizational values in teams and proper patient outcomes.

Conclusion

In such a manner, it is evident that advocacy for employees enables nursing staff to perform in better-equipped, safer, and more professionally engaging environments, which allows for providing a higher quality of care to patients. Through advocacy efforts, leaders promote essential values, performance excellence, and reliability of a healthcare facility as a collaborative entity. Ultimately, engagement, support, and striving for excellence enable the implementation of high-standard care for the served populations of patients.

References

Bergstedt, K., & Wei, H. (2020). Leadership strategies to promote frontline nursing staff engagement. Nursing Management, 51(2), 48-53.