Advocacy and Nursing

The nurse’s role as an advocate for the patient appears to be a taken-for-granted aspect of nursing in the twenty-first century; in both the nursing literature and in the British, Irish, and international nursing practice contexts. The focus on the advocacy role of the nurse is predominantly located in the context of hospital-based care and at the level of the individual patient, as opposed to the wider sociopolitical context. However, there are some signs that the greater focus on primary care, globalisation, and the implementation of legislation such as the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act (ADMA) ( https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/64/enacted/en/html . Accessed 11 August 2023) will broaden this focus in future. While many nurse scholars, nursing registration bodies, professional organisations, and practising nurses are comfortable with the rhetoric of “nurse as patient advocate”, this is not an uncontroversial stance. A number of authors have challenged both the basis for the claim that nurses should be patient advocates and the possibility of such a role for nurses. Given that claims to the advocacy role for nurses are continuing to appear both in our literature and in our codes of practice, it seems relevant to ask what the notion of nurse advocacy means and what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of claims for and against an advocacy role for nurses.