Advocacy in Nursing: Nurse Leaders, Barriers, and Strategies Report

This report examines the critical role of advocacy within the nursing profession, emphasizing the impact of nurse leaders on patient care and employee satisfaction. It highlights the multifaceted ways nurse leaders support their staff, including involvement in decision-making, resource protection, and mentorship. The report explores how organizational culture, such as communication breakdowns and high employee turnover, can hinder a nurse leader's effectiveness. Furthermore, it suggests strategies for healthcare facilities to meet new expectations in the nursing profession, such as lowering nurse-to-patient ratios, updating technology, collecting employee feedback, and adopting democratic leadership styles to improve working conditions and patient outcomes. The report underscores the importance of these strategies in creating a supportive environment for nurses and ensuring high-quality patient care.

Running head: ADVOCACY IN NURSING 1
ADVOCACY IN NURSING
Name of Student
Institution Affiliation

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ADVOCACY IN NURSING
Task one
Advocacy is an essential part of the nursing profession. Nurse leaders play a key role in
the improvement of patient care and outcomes by advocating for their employees. Nurse leaders
serve as advocates for their employees in multiple ways. Most importantly, the do so by
involving them in decision making on key decisions that directly affect them (Tomajan, 2012).
Additionally they also advocate for their employees protecting their resources during budget
scrutiny processes. Besides they can also do so by facilitating healthy work environments.
Finally, nurse leaders’ advocate for their employees by developing employee’s leadership
capabilities by providing fragmentary mentorship (Tomajan, 2012).Advocacy for employees has
a major positive impact on patient care and care outcomes. First, it leads to high levels of
satisfaction among nurses and minimizes the rate of employee turnover. The impact of this is an
improvement in patient outcomes and the quality of care (Sfantou et al., 2017).
Task Two
The effectiveness of a nurse leader is largely determined by the circumstances in which
they work. Working in a healthcare setting with a dysfunctional organizational culture may
therefore hamper the performance of a nurse leader. An example of an organization culture
barrier that can be encountered by a nurse leader is breakdown in organization communication
whereby communication only flows from the top. This may lead to poor interpersonal
relationships and unmet expectations. Communication breakdown can hinder the ability of a
nurse leader to streamline operations within their workplace. Additionally, nursing profession is
one of the most demanding professions. For this reasons a dysfunctional organization culture
may lead to high levels of employee’s turnover, whereby employees voluntarily leave their

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organization due to poor working conditions or general dissatisfaction with their work. In such
circumstances, a nurse leader may feel helpless in their attempts to make employees stay prove
futile. High employee turnover can therefore be a productivity barrier for a nurse leader (Tsai,
2011).
Task three
With these emerging new developments in the nursing profession, healthcare facilities are
tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that necessary adjustments are made to avoid
overworking nurses. One of the strategies that healthcare institutions can use to meet these new
expectations is lowering nurse-to patient ratio. Reduction of patient-nurse ratio can be achieved
through the implementation of hourly rounding. Additionally, updating the technology being
used in healthcare facilities may also be used improve efficiency in operations and reduce
unnecessary delays (Masterson, 2017).besides collecting employee feedback data would also
make it possible for the facilities to understand the opinion of their employees on what they feel
should be done to make their working experience more satisfactory. Finally the adoption of a
more accommodative leadership such as a democratic leadership style. A democratic leadership
style has an advantage of making employees more open and may lead to building of a long
lasting relationships. The use of the style makes it possible for employees to give suggestion and
solutions on how new expectations can be met without unnecessary workloads on them (Dyess,
Sherman, Pratt & Chiang-Hanisko, 2016).

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References
Dyess, S. M., Sherman, R. O., Pratt, B. A., & Chiang-Hanisko, L. (2016). Growing nurse leaders: Their
perspectives on nursing leadership and today’s practice environment. OJ Nurs.
Masterson, L. (2017). Nurses are burnt out. Here’s how hospitals can help. Healthcare Dive, May, 12.
Sfantou, D. F., Laliotis, A., Patelarou, A. E., Sifaki-Pistolla, D., Matalliotakis, M., & Patelarou, E.
(2017, December). Importance of leadership style towards quality of care measures in healthcare
settings: a systematic review. In Healthcare (Vol. 5, No. 4, p. 73). Multidisciplinary Digital
Publishing Institute.
Tomajan, K. (2012). Advocating for nurses and nursing. OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in
Nursing, 17(1), 4.
Tsai, Y. (2011). Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job
satisfaction. BMC health services research, 11(1), 98.