Revisiting the Image: Year 2
An important nursing skill and competency that I have learned more about in NSG 202 is advocacy. Advocacy is a fundamental competency and helps to define the role of the nurse as a patient-centered caregiver who focuses on and prioritizes the needs of the patient during their care. In NSG 202 I have gained a deeper understanding of this competency and the importance of advocacy in the nursing profession. In this course I have learned that advocacy involves speaking up for patient rights, ensuring their voices are heard, and promoting their access to care and wishes during their care. Advocacy is so important in nursing because the nurse acts as a middle man between the patient and the other care professionals and functions as a voice for the patients wishes during their care. In addition to advocacy being about speaking up for the patients rights and wishes, advocacy can also involve educating patients and families and allowing them to make informed choices about their care. Overall, advocacy is so important because it ensures patients voices are heard, their rights and protected, and their care meets their needs. It also fosters trust and creates a better healthcare experience for the patient and the healthcare team as a whole.
Image from unsplash.com Creditor: porcorex
I chose this image to symbolize advocacy in nursing because it shows that nursing is about the people you are caring for. This relates to advocacy because advocacy in nursing is about patient centered care and speaking up for the rights and wishes of your patient. This image symbolizes this by showing a stethoscope and figures of people, showing that nursing is about the people you are taking care of and doing what is right for them, whether this be advocating for the their care or wishes or educating them to make informed choices about their care.
Blended Competency Category : The blended competency category that best fits the image and symbol that I chose is Ethical and Legal Competencies. This blended competency category fits best because advocacy is an ethical principle as well as the legal responsibility of nurses, therefor blending both ethical and legal competencies together.
One thought on “Revisiting the Image: Year 2”
I think that this image is a great representation of advocacy. While not everyone may not know it by its name, this is a quality that I think many associate with the nursing field due to our central role in the patient’s care. Cultural representations, such as TV shows and movies, help shape many people’s ideas about nursing, but I feel that TV shows specifically portraying nurses and their work lives do the best job at representing the role advocacy plays in the profession.–