Factors influencing nurses' advocacy role in level two public hospitals in the North West Province of South Africa

Abstract

BACKGROUND Nursing advocacy has been a topic of much discussion in the nursing literature for several decades. The researcher was interested in contributing to quality patient care by empowering nurses in their advocacy roles OBJECTIVES The objective was to explore and describe the factors that influence nurses' advocacy roles METHOD A qualitative descriptive inquiry was conducted using focus group interviews with professional nurses as participants who were purposefully recruited. Interviews were conducted in all the level two public hospitals in the North West Province. The data were thematically analysed using Creswell's eight steps of data analysis to identify common themes (Creswell, 2014:209). RESULTS Three main themes were identified. These findings were as follows: managerial and environmental factors such as lack of management support and nurses' lack of training influence the advocacy role of nurses negatively. The second finding was personal factors such as empathy, sympathy, and assertiveness positively influenced the nurse's advocacy role. The last finding was patient-related factors such as compromised patients' rights, autonomy, religious and cultural beliefs affecting the nurses' advocacy role either negatively or positively. A unique finding of the study was that language differences could also influence the ability of nurses to advocate for their patients. CONCLUSION Overall, several factors can influence the nurse either positively or negatively when advocating for patients. Nurses need to be empowered in their nursing advocacy role to provide quality patient care within a public hospital setting to advocate for their patients.