Advocacy and Inter Professionalism

Advocacy and Inter Professionalism

Introduction

A doctor's responsibility is to provide the best care possible to his patient. This involves proper diagnosis, quality of treatment, medication and cooperative interaction. Interaction with the patient is crucial. A patient that is comfortable with their doctor and understands what is going on is much easier to treat effectively. For an understanding to be reached, the doctor must communicate with the patient. The doctor should inform the patient of what is wrong, what the possible treatment is and the possible outcomes before he begins with the actual treatment. The reason behind this practice involves factors of law, ethics and etiquette.

A foreign girl was admitted to the accident and emergency department. She suffered from a dislocated shoulder. The patient's family was unable to accompany her due to unforeseen circumstances. In this particular incident, the doctor that examined this young girl failed to communicate with her. He did not explain what he was doing. This could have frightened the young girl and made matters worse. Fortunately, a nurse intervened. She trusted her judgment. She felt that the doctor's approach to the patient was incorrect and before matters got out of hand, an interpreter was arranged. The issue resolves in a proper and timely manner because the nurse acted as the patient's advocate.

This paper aims to explain advocacy in relation to the above incident. It also discusses inter professional working as portrayed by the nurse.

Discussion

Advocacy

Advocacy is a political process. It is typically initiated by an individual or a group of workers. These individuals, or social workers, aim to form a policy or allocate resources based on political, social or economic systems and their respective institutions. Motivating factors may vary from morality, ethics faith or even protection of economic or public assets. To achieve their goal, these individuals capitalize on the capabilities of public forums, media campaigns, research or national surveys (McGrath, 2007, pp. 1171). As a motion that gains influence from political policies, a certain amount of lobbying is also required. Lobbying is a specific type of advocacy where legislators are approached regarding an issue at hand. Approaching legislators can sometimes backfire and harm a just cause (McGrath, 2007, pp. 1172-1173). Politics is a complex field, and motions can be twisted or obscured to achieve personal gain by corrupt legislators or officials.

The above definition does not cover the concepts of power relations, the participation of the general public, the participation of common professionals or the vision of a just and honorable society. Advocacy can take on the simple meaning of two questions; what is and what should be. The later describes the concepts of a fair and just society as per the mentioned vision of a utopian society. Forms of advocacy may include budget advocacy, administrative advocacy, express versus issue advocacy, ideological advocacy, interest group advocacy, legislative, mass, and media advocacy (Cohen, 2010, pp. 866-72). The form of advocacy that concerns the incident mentioned above is health care advocacy.

At this point, several legal and professional issues should ...