Health Advocacy: Annotated Bibliography

The reason I selected this article is because honestly I was intrigued by the title. As nurses advocating for patients plays a huge role in our careers. I believe that patient advocacy should never be just one person’s job. That is why I really wanted to explore this article and see how patient advocacy can be seen as a team sport.

This article contributes to the knowledge we have learned about advocacy thus far in our course. We have learned that advocacy is not just an individual task and that it needs to be taken seriously by all staff members. This article also helps to show that health advocacy is an issue that is not only placed on physician’s shoulders.

In the Hubbinette, Dobson, Voyer, & Regehr (2014) article, multiple physicians
were interviewed about what they thought health advocacy was all about. Every participant stated that the advocacy they were involved in was a collective activity with a variety of health care professionals. Participants suggested that this team-based model of advocacy took the burden off the physician to ‘do it all’. (Hubinette, Dobson, Voyer, & Regehr, 2014, p. 897) I learned from this article that health advocacy really is a team sport. The more team players you have involved the better a facility can advocate for their patients. Having health advocacy be a cohesive goal will not only lead to happier patients, but also a staff that will be there for one another through it all. To me that is what health care should always be about.