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Patient Advocacy Essay

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Patient Advocacy Essay
Understanding your patient’s wants and needs allows the nurse to successfully advocate for their patient. If your patient is of the older aged population and you are trying to advocate for advanced life support, but your patient does not wish to have advanced directives then you are not advocating for your patient. Using your questioning skills and the resources available to you, you can figure out what the patient needs in that moment. Sometimes a patient’s needs are clear-cut such as needing pain medications to ease the discomfort. Other times, the patient’s needs can be very vague or even complex.
Patient advocacy extends beyond the individual patient according to some nursing professionals. Some nurses take it upon themselves to advocate
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It is also a vital aspect of good nursing care; especially since they spend the most time with patients. Compassion, or caring can be viewed as “nursing’s most precious asset”, a fundamental element of nursing care, and as one of the strengths of the profession. It involves being close to patients and seeing their situation as more than a medical scenario and routine procedures.
Compassionate nursing is remembering to put yourself in your patients’ shoes and be sensitive to the way they may be feeling. Acknowledging and respecting patients’ concerns, wishes, or viewpoints can help them feel cared for and validated. It may also help the nurse and the patient communicate more freely and clearly with each other. Building trust and understanding with patients helps you to provide the best care possible.
Burnout can occur in any occupation. However, it has been found to occur most amongst professional people in the caring professions of medicine, nursing, social work, counseling and teaching. It is typically associated with the prolonged and cumulative effects of emotional stress and pressure that arise from personal interaction with members of the public on a daily basis. Emotional exhaustion leads to an inability to engage fully with many aspects of the job but, particularly, with those aspects involving interaction. Speech may become flattened and body and facial gestures diminished as the

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