Nurses as patient advocates reporting negligence by other health care Essay

Nurses as patient advocates reporting negligence by other health care providers - Essay Example Advances in the 21st century are seeing many new developments in the field of healthcare forcing the nursing faculty to reinforce effective and appropriate education and take up more challenging and leading roles. This becomes of primary importance by virtue of the nature of the profession nursing is. As such, the primary goal of nursing is to provide quality health care to patients. One of such challenges is to be advocates to their patients. By the nature of their profession, nurses are bestowed upon the opportunity to work closely with physicians of their patients. Thus any incompetence, negligence, carelessness and even malpractice on the part of physician or other health professionals may be recognized by the nurses. Patients and their relatives, who are ignorant of various aspects of medical fraternity fall prey to the incompetence and unethical deeds of their physicians and suffer in silence. In such situations, nurses must take up the role of advocates and provide justice to the patients and their relatives by voicing the injustice matter. This must be done with the intention of better care of the patient. It is of course not an easy task to whistle blow! Whistle blowing means "going public or speaking out to ones professional organization or to the media in order to protect the welfare of patients because of a perceived wrongdoing on the part of others" (Elen; cited in ANA, 2001). Whistle blowing is a major source of moral distress and mental trauma to the nurses because it makes the nurses weigh between the duties of the nurses and the obligations of providing justice to the patients and their relatives. Taking up the role of patients advocates is not without risk for the nurses. Whistle blowing can lead to loss of job, negative reactions from coworkers and even legal consequences (ANA, 2001). It can cause undue loss of privacy of the patient, tarn the image of the physician and institution and also cause loss of provider to