professional advocacy initiative: A grand opening, The

Arizona Nurse,  Jan 1999  by Eddy, Lyndall D

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The Professional Advocacy Initiative. You will be hearing a lot about it. It is the AzNA Board of Directors primary strategic initiative for the next year - and probably well into the future. You will be involved in some way, perhaps in many ways. This initiative is a result of the board's listening to nurses, talking with other health care professionals, and critically evaluating the state and national environments that affect nursing practice. What follows here are excerpts from the board's working paper that frames the association's support of nurses wherever they provide services.

The association anticipates that the new millennium brings with it continued rapid expansion of technology. Communications will move increasingly into electronic media. Career options will expand geometrically. Individuals will be more autonomous in an increasingly linked global network.

The nurses association is challenged to support experienced nurses in meeting the demands of the new century and millennium and at the same time recognize that new nurses bring different values, skills, and knowledge to the care of the people in the 21 st century.

The nurse of 2000 AD is:

Flexible

Engaged in continuous learning

Expecting multiple careers in nursing

Sees nursing as a profession, a long term career

Loyal to patient and profession

Experiences transitory loyalty to employer, has many successive employers

Committed to continuous quality improvement of practice

AzNA of 2000 AD

Is resource to the nurse of 2000 AD

Uses electronic media to provide services

Advocates for nurses via public relations, liaisons

Advocates for health care recipients via political and legislative activity at state level

Links with other SNAs to support a national perspective

Assumptions and Principles Related to Professional Advocacy

Although workplace advocacy has been used as an umbrella term to cover a variety of strategies to influence the employment environment, the association believes the term professional advocacy better describes the roles and relationships between the association an the professional nurse. There are several reasons for this choice in terminology:

The Arizona Nurses' Association focuses on individual nurses and not employers or organizations

Nurses practice their discipline in a variety of settings; an increasing number of nurses are selfemployed

The association supports nurses' professional responsibility to advocate on their own behalf just as they advocate on behalf of patients

Workplace advocacy may connote paternalism, suggesting that someone else will speak on behalf of nurses rather than nurses being empowered to speak on their own behalf.

Patients, professional colleagues and employers will best be served by nurses if proactive approaches are crafted and implemented to support professional registered nurses. No instant remedy is available to reinfuse trust where trust has eroded. AzNA strongly believes the professional association for registered nurses is in the ideal position to serve as a convener of nursing discussions on nursing practice issues, to develop plans that can be individually implemented regardless of work place affiliation to improve the practice environment and ultimately patient care. We believe all stakeholders in health care system are committed to quality patient care and must work together collaboratively for the benefit of all.

Definition of Professional Advocacy and Description of Preferred Practice Environment

Professional advocacy is the creation and maintenance of an environment that facilitates and enables nurses to provide safe, quality patient care while fostering the professional self-actualization solutions of the nurse. Professional advocacy also includes a system that supports nurses in seeking solutions to problems; supports nurses who advocate for quality care, and supports and develops nurses who are skilled in presenting concerns and in resolving conflict.

As with most Grand Openings, the board has already quietly begun to move on this initiative. You may have noticed occasional mention in the Arizona Nurse of the board's meeting with the Board of Directors of the Arizona Organization of Nurse Executives. This began a year and a half ago when the association met first with the Chief Executive Officer of the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association and subsequently with the AzONE board to talk about an issue that concerns all of us: the quality of patient care. Ongoing dialog between AzONE and AzNA boards has led to quarterly joint meetings of the boards with excellent discussions about data on quality of patient care, the pattern and kinds of complaints to the

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Arizona State Department of Health Services hospital licensing division, and expectations of new graduates as they look for their first professional positions (as clearly spelled out by a panel of students from ASU West). These discussions are expected to have long term benefits for nurses as well as hospitals.