PATIENT ADVOCACY AMONG INSTITUTIONALLY EMPLOYED REGISTERED NURSES (NURSES).
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1991
Number of pages: 216
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study purposed to explore the definitions of advocacy which nurses hold, to define the variables which influence nurses' ethical decision making relative to patient advocacy in institutions, and to develop a theory to explain the decision making processes that nurses employ when deciding whether or not to act as patient advocates in institutional settings.

The sample of 40 registered nurses included staff nurses, clinical nurse specialists, nurse managers and directors of nursing ranging in age from 24 to 54. Data were collected over a three month period. Informal observations were carried out in one critical care unit and one oncology unit in a large, university teaching hospital and one critical care unit and two medical/surgical units in a large, urban public health hospital. Formal, taped interviews were conducted according to pre-written interview guides. Subjects also completed a demographic questionnaire and a pre-written decision making inventory. The method of data analysis was the discovery of grounded theory.

Findings confirmed that nurses reason through ethical problems using a decision making process very similar to the nursing process. The advocacy decision making process involves antecedent conditions that lead nurses to advocacy, a problem recognition and decision point, an analysis phase, an implementation phase, and an evaluation phase. Also emerging from the study were categorical models that define properties of patient advocacy and delineate personal and professional characteristics of effective advocates. A strong connection between patient advocacy and caring proved to be a significant finding.

The results of this study were consistent with the current nursing ethics literature on patient advocacy and the literature on caring. The findings of this study hold important implications for clinical nursing practice and nursing education.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-01, Section: B, page: 0203.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1991.

School code: 0034.