Nurses’ Advocacy in Intensive Care: What Insights Can Nurses’ Experiences During the Pandemic Reveal?

Publication date: Jan 01, 2025

Patient advocacy must be understood as an ethical component of nursing practice that involves respecting and defending patients’ rights and autonomy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the vulnerability of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) increased requiring that nurses advocate for those patients more than ever in a context in which changes in daily nursing practices of care imposed by the pandemic deeply impacted nurses’ advocacy. In this study, we examined ICU nurses’ patient advocacy during the pandemic, using feminist ethics as a theoretical lens. Twenty-five ICU nurses from Brazil participated in individual interviews. Our findings reflect that advocacy is a moral component of nursing identity. This moral identity represents the identity of nurses as a profession as it represents their values and responsibilities which are social in nature. Although the pandemic challenged nurses’ advocacy practices these professionals had an important role to give voice to patients and to preserve their autonomy and dignity, strengthening patient-centered care.

Concepts Keywords
Brazil Adult
Daily Brazil
Interviews COVID-19
Nurses COVID‐19 pandemic
Pandemic critical care
Critical Care Nursing
Female
Humans
Intensive Care Units
Male
Middle Aged
moral agency
nurse identity
Nurse’s Role
nursing practice
Nursing Staff, Hospital
Pandemics
Patient Advocacy
patient advocacy
Qualitative Research

Semantics

Type Source Name
disease MESH COVID-19 pandemic
disease IDO role
drug DRUGBANK Etoperidone

Original Article

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