Background:The concept of patient advocacy is still poorly understood and not clearly conceptualized. Therefore, there is a gap between the ideal of patient advocacy and the reality of practice. In order to increase nursing actions as a patient advocate, a comprehensive and clear definition of this concept is necessary.Research objective:This study aimed to offer a comprehensive and clear definition of patient advocacy.Research design:A total of 46 articles and 2 books published between 1850 and 2016 and related to (...) the concept of patient advocacy were selected from six databases and considered for concept analysis based on Rodgers’ evolutionary approach.Ethical considerations:This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Tarbiat Modares University.Findings:The attributes of patient advocacy are safeguarding (track medical errors, and protecting patients from incompetency or misconduct of co-workers and other members of healthcare team), apprising (providing information about the patient’s diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, suggesting alternatives of healthcare, and providing information about discharge program), valuing (maintaining self-control, enabling patients to make decisions freely, maintaining individualization and humanity, maintaining patient privacy, and acting in the patients’ values, culture, beliefs, and preferences), mediating (liaison between patients, families, and healthcare professionals, being patients’ voice, and communicate patient preferences and cultural values to members of the healthcare team), and championing social justice in the provision of healthcare (confronting inappropriate policies or rules in the healthcare system, identifying and correcting inequalities in delivery of health services, and facilitating access to community health services and health resources).Discussion and conclusion:The analysis of this concept can help to develop educational or managerial theories, design instruments for evaluating the performance of nurses in patient advocacy, develop strategies for enhancing patient advocacy, and improve the safety and quality of nursing care in the community and healthcare system. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the controversy concerning the advocacy of ethical values in conservation biology. First, I argue, as others have, that conservation biology is a science laden with values both ethical and non-ethical. Second, after clarifying the notion of advocacy at work, I contend that conservation biologists should advocate the preservation of biological diversity. Third, I explore what ethical grounds should be used for advocating the preservation of ecological systems by conservation biologists. I argue that conservation (...) biologists should defend their preservationist positions on instrumentalist grounds alone if the context of discussion and debate is a scientific one. (shrink)

Recent debates within the autism advocacy community have raised difficult questions about who can credibly act as a representative of a particular population and what responsibilities that...

Patient advocacy organizations provide patient- and caregiver-oriented education, advocacy, and support services. PAOs are formally organized nonprofit groups that concern themselves with medical conditions or potential medical conditions and have a mission and take actions that seek to help people affected by those medical conditions or to help their families. Examples of PAOs include the American Cancer Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the American Heart Association. These organizations advocate for, and provide services to, millions of (...) people with physical and mental conditions — such as cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — via their outreach, meetings, counseling, websites, and published materials. A PAO usually seeks to raise public awareness of a disease’s symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options and promotes research to cure or to prevent that disease. (shrink)

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) advocate for increased research funding and policy changes and provide services to patients and their families. Given their credibility and political clout, PAOs are often successful in changing policies, increasing research funding, and increasing public awareness of medical conditions and the problems of their constituents. In order to advance their missions, PAOs accept funding, frequently from pharmaceutical firms. Industry funding can help PAOs advance their goals but can also create conflicts of interest (COI). Research indicates (...) that bias may occur, even among well-meaning professionals, when people and organizations have financial COI. Industry funding may therefore influence PAOs to act in ways that favor the interests of their donors, which may increase the risk of harm to patients. This article extends the analysis developed in the Institute of Medicine report, Conflicts of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, and applies the analysis to understand PAOs and their relationships with industry. It argues that the preferred goal of institutional COI policies should not be to promote trust, but to promote trustworthiness and appropriately placed trust. (shrink)

The question of whether clinical ethics consultants may engage in patient advocacy in the course of consultation has not been addressed, but it highlights for the field that consultants? allegiances, and the boundaries of appropriate professional practice, must be better understood. I consider arguments for and against patient advocacy in clinical ethics consultation, which demonstrate that patient advocacy is permissible, but not central to the practice of consultation. I then offer four recommendations for consultants who engage in (...) patient advocacy, and consider the implications of this issue for the field.1. (shrink)

Advocacy is an important concept in nursing practice; it is frequently used to describe th nurse-client relationship. The term advocacy, however, is subject to ambiguity of interpretation. Such ambiguity was evidenced recently in criticisms levelled at the nursing profession by hospital ethicist Ellen Bernal. She reproached nursing for using 'patient rights advocate' as a viable role for nurses. We maintain that, for nursing, patient advocacy may encompass, but is not limited to, patient rights advocacy. Patient (...) class='Hi'>advocacy is not merely the defence of infringements of patient rights. Advocacy for nursing stems from a philosophy of nursing in which nursing practice is the support of an individual to promote his or her own well-being, as understood by that individual. It is an ethic of practice. La défense des malades joue un grand rôle dans la pratique des infirmiers/ères. Le terme est souvent utilisé pour définir les rapports entre malades et soignants. Le mot 'defénse' pourtant, peut être mal compris. Une ambiguïté était évidente récemment dans la critique de la profession infirmière faite par la philosophe éthique Ellen Bernal. Elle reproche à la profession d'utiliser le terme 'avocat des droits des malades' pour désigner le rôle primordial des infirmiers/ères. Nous croyons que pour les soignants, la défense des malades peut comprendre le rôle 'd'avocat des droits des malades' mais elle ne s'y borne pas. La défense n'est pas limitée à la défense des infractions des droits des malades. La défense dans la profession infirmière est basée sur une philosophie où la pratique infirmière est le soutien des malades dans leur quête de promouvoir leur propre bien-être. Die Fürsprache spielt eine wichtige Rolle in der Krankenpflege. Sie wird oft als kennzeichnend für die Beziehung zwischen Patient und Pflegepersonal beschrieben. Der Ausdruck 'Fürsprache' kann aber auch mehrdeutig interpretiert werden. Das wurde letzthin in der Kritik der Ethikerin Ellen Bernal an der Krankenpflege sichtbar. Sie machte den Pflegenden den Vorwurf, dass sie sich die Rolle des 'Rechts-Advokat des Patienten' aneignen. Wir sind der Meinung, dass es die Aufgabe des Pflegepersonals ist, auch die Rechte der Patienten zu vertreten, aber dass das nur ein Teil der Fürsprache ist. Sie ist nicht nur Verteidignung von verletzten Patientenrechten. Die Fürsprache in der Krankenpflege stammt von einer Philosophie, deren Ausübung die Unterstützung der Patienten für ihr Wohlergehen zum Ziel hat, so wie die Patienten selbst ihr Wohlergehen verstehen. Sie ist eine Ethik der Tat. (shrink)

Background: Advocacy is an important role of psychiatric nurses because their patients are ethically, socially, and legally vulnerable. This study of Japanese expert psychiatric nurses’ judgments of interventions for patient advocacy will show effective strategies for ethical nursing practice and their relationship with Japanese culture. Objectives: This article explores Japanese psychiatric nurses’ decision to intervene as a patient advocate and examine their ethical, cultural, and social implications. Research design: Using semi-structured interviews verbatim, themes of the problems that required (...) interventions were inductively summarized by a qualitative analysis and their contexts and nursing judgments were examined. Participants and research context: The participants were 21 nurses with 5 or more years of experience in psychiatric nursing. Ethical considerations: The research was approved by Institutional Review Board of research site and study facilities. The participants gave written informed consent. Findings: Analysis of 45 cases showed that nurses decided to intervene when surrounding people’s opinions impeded patients’ safety, healthcare professionals’ policies impeded patients’ decision-making, own violent behaviors impeded treatment and welfare services for patients, own or families’ low acceptance of illness impeded patients’ self-actualization, inappropriate treatment or care impeded patients’ liberty, and their families abused patients’ property. Discussion: To solve conflicts between patients and their surrounding people, the nurses sought reconciliation between them, which is in accordance with Japanese cultural norms respecting harmony. When necessary, however, they protected patients’ rights against cultural norms. Therefore, their judgments cannot be explained by cultural norms alone. Conclusion: The findings indicate that the nurses’ judgments were based on respect for patients’ rights apart from cultural norms, and they first sought solutions fitting the cultural norms before other solutions. This seems to be an ethical, effective strategy if advocates know the culture in depth. (shrink)

Parents and guardians in child protection systems are in unequal power relationships with child protection practitioners. This relationship is experienced as exclusionary or even oppressive by many parents and guardians. For families and communities in the child protection system who experience intersectional discrimination and disadvantage, such as people with intellectual disabilities and First Nations people, this unequal relationship and subsequent potential exclusion and oppression can be even more profound. A growing body of literature indicates that advocacy can assist in (...) addressing unequal relationships in other contexts, such as involuntary mental health. This paper explores the role of representational advocacy in supporting parents in child protection settings through a case study of an advocacy service in Victoria, Australia. Using a human rights framework to guide the analysis, the paper highlights how advocacy can help support rights, but that broader structural change will be required to consistently uphold the rights of parents. (shrink)

Background:The decision whether to initiate cardiopulmonary resuscitation may sometimes be ethically complex. While studies have addressed some of these issues, along with the role of nurses in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, most have not considered the importance of nurses acting as advocates for their patients with respect to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.Research objective:To explore what the nurse’s advocacy role is in cardiopulmonary resuscitation from the perspective of patients, relatives, and health professionals in the Basque Country (Spain).Research design:An exploratory critical qualitative study was conducted (...) from October 2015 to March 2016. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.Participants:Four discussion groups were held: one with patients and relatives (n = 8), two with nurses (n = 7 and n = 6, respectively), and one with physicians (n = 5).Ethical considerations:Approval was obtained from the Basque Country Clinical Research Ethics Committee.Findings:Three significant themes were identified: (a) accompanying patients during end of life in a context of medical dominance, (b) maintaining the pact of silence, and (c) yielding to legal uncertainty and concerns.Discussion:The values and beliefs of the actors involved, as well as pre-established social and institutional rules reduced nurses’ advocacy to that of intermediaries between the physician and the family within the hospital environment. On the contrary, in primary health care, nurses participated more actively within the interdisciplinary team.Conclusion:This study provides key information for the improvement and empowerment for ethical nursing practice in a cardiac arrest, and provides the perspective of patients and relatives, nurses and physicians. (shrink)

In “The Bioethics of Environmental Injustice,” Ray and Cooper (2024) lay out compelling arguments to increase attention to environmental health within bioethics. Advocacy is crucial, they argue, co...

Nursing professionals are in key positions to support end-of-life decisions and to advocate for patients and families across all health care settings. Advocacy has been identified as the common thread of quality end-of-life nursing care. The purpose of this comparative descriptive study was to reveal acute care nurses' perceptions of advocacy behaviors in end-of-life nursing practice. The 317 participating nurses reported frequent contact with dying patients despite modest exposure to end-of-life education. This study did not confirm an overall (...) difference in advocacy behaviors among novice, experienced and expert nurses; however, it offered insight into the supports and barriers nurses at different skill levels experienced in their practice of advocacy. (shrink)

The paper offers a theoretical investigation into the sources of normativity in practical argumentation. The chief question is: Do we need objectively-minded, unbiased arguers or can we count on “good” argumentative processes in which individual biases cancel each other out? I address this question by analysing a detailed structure of practical argument and its varieties, and by discussing the tenets of a comparative approach to practical reason. I argue that given the comparative structure proposed, reasoned advocacy in argumentative activity (...) upholds reasonableness whenever that activity is adequately designed. I propose some basic rules for such a design of practical argumentation. (shrink)

Rare genetic diseases collectively impact millions of individuals in the United States. These patients and their families share many challenges including delayed diagnosis, lack of knowledgeable providers, and limited economic incentives to develop new therapies for small patient groups. As such, rare disease patients and families often must rely on advocacy, including both self-advocacy to access clinical care and public advocacy to advance research. However, these demands raise serious concerns for equity, as both care and research for (...) a given disease can depend on the education, financial resources, and social capital available to the patients in a given community. In this article, we utilize three case examples to illustrate ethical challenges at the intersection of rare diseases, advocacy and justice, including how reliance on advocacy in rare disease may drive unintended consequences for equity. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for diverse stakeholders to begin to address these challenges. (shrink)

Ethics and Advocacy considers the connections and differences between critical reflection or moral arguments or narratives and advocacy for particular issues regarding justice and moral behavior and dispositions. The chapters in this volume share an interest in overcoming polarizing division that does not enable fruitful give-and-take discussion and even possible persuasive justifications. The authors all believe that both ethics and advocacy are important and should inform each other, but each offers a divergent point of view on the (...) way forward to these agreed-upon ends. Our shared goal is to avoid academic withdrawal and to speak relevantly to the important issues of our day while halting--or at least mitigating--the disruptive discourse--almost shouting--that characterizes our polarized current society. (shrink)

Professions have traditionally treated advocacy as a collective duty, best assigned to professional associations to perform. In North American nursing, advocacy for issues affecting identifiable patients is assigned instead to their nurses. We argue that nursing associations’ withdrawal from advocacy for patient care issues is detrimental to nurses and patients alike. Most nurses work in large institutions whose internal policies they cannot influence. When these create obstacles to good care, the inability of nurses to affect change can (...) result in avoidable distress for them and for their patients. We illustrate this point with a case study: the circumstances of the death of Michael Joseph LeBlanc, an inmate at Kingston Penitentiary Regional Hospital (Ontario). We conclude that patients and their nurses will suffer unnecessarily unless or until nursing associations cease to burden individual nurses with the responsibility for patient advocacy. (shrink)

In nursing, the concept of advocacy is often understood in terms of reactive or proactive action aimed at protecting patients' legal or moral rights. However, advocacy activities have not often been researched in the context of everyday clinical nursing practice, at least from patients' point of view. This study investigated the implementation of nursing advocacy in the context of procedural pain care from the perspectives of both patients and nurses. The cross-sectional study was conducted on a cluster (...) sample of surgical otolaryngology patients (n = 405) and nurses (n = 118) from 12 hospital units in Finland. The data were obtained using an instrument specially designed for this purpose, and analysed statistically by descriptive and non-parametric methods. According to the results, patients and nurses have slightly different views about which dimensions of advocacy are implemented in procedural pain care. It seems that advocacy acts are chosen and implemented rather haphazardly, depending partly on how active patients are in expressing their wishes and interests and partly on nurses' empowerment. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the challenge that political activism runs the risk of generating abstract freedoms for oppressed subjects and neglecting the effects of oppression on the development of subjectivity. I argue that a political activism in concert with a companion ethics of advocacy and listening is best positioned to improve the political and economic conditions of individuals as well as ensure that they are able to realize their freedom in meaningful action. In this paper I distinguish (...) political emancipation from human emancipation using the political and ethical writings of Simone de Beauvoir. I then argue that a feminist ethics of advocacy and listening can serve the project of human emancipation as emancipatory advocacy. I then return to Beauvoir to illuminate the dynamics of privilege, risk, and ambiguity in emancipatory advocacy through her own activism and advocacy in the case of Djamila Boupacha and Algerian independence. (shrink)

Children with HIV are dependent on taking continuous medication and care, and family preparation is required when disclosing HIV. This study aimed to unveil families’ experiences with HIV disclosure to children under 13 years old. Eight family members who have disclosed HIV to seropositive children were interviewed in‐depth and individually. The fieldwork took place at a public paediatric outpatient hospital in Rio de Janeiro. The results showed that the family members’ discourse highlighted two ways of knowing their own condition and (...) disclosing the condition of the children with HIV. First, they needed to address the communication of bad news and discover their own HIV status through their children's disease. Second, the disclosure was a process constituted by four stages: preparing for disclosure, identifying the time, deciding how and where to tell, and instilling silence after disclosure. They also recognized that nurses had a role in the process as part of an interprofessional team. Nurses can develop advocacy care and empower family members in the preparation of safe HIV disclosure. By systematizing and institutionalizing the care advocacy process, nurses may enable caretakers and children to participate in their therapeutic management, improving adherence to the treatment and self‐care with autonomy. (shrink)

The paper discusses the use of term ‘advocacy science’ which is communication of science which goes beyond simple reporting of scientific findings, using the case study of biotechnology. It argues that advocacy science should be used to distinguish the engagement of modern civil society organizations to interpret scientific knowledge for their lobbying. It illustrates how this new communicative process has changed political discourse in science and general perception of the role of science in contemporary society.

The animal advocacy movement(s) -- Sport hunting : environmental stewardship, cultural ritual, or blood sport? -- Zoos and aquaria : species conservation, education, or unethical imprisonment? -- Fur : "green" or irredeemably cruel product? -- Industrial animal agriculture: injustice writ large -- Reconciliation and the way forward.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 8, Page W1-W3, August 2012.

This paper focuses on IFLA's international advocacy role. It explores the relationship between library advo-cacy and information ethics, before outlining the ethical thrusts of IFLA's advocacy and describing IFLA's international advocacy work, with special emphasis on Africa.

Children with HIV are dependent on taking continuous medication and care, and family preparation is required when disclosing HIV. This study aimed to unveil families’ experiences with HIV disclosure to children under 13 years old. Eight family members who have disclosed HIV to seropositive children were interviewed in‐depth and individually. The fieldwork took place at a public paediatric outpatient hospital in Rio de Janeiro. The results showed that the family members’ discourse highlighted two ways of knowing their own condition and (...) disclosing the condition of the children with HIV. First, they needed to address the communication of bad news and discover their own HIV status through their children's disease. Second, the disclosure was a process constituted by four stages: preparing for disclosure, identifying the time, deciding how and where to tell, and instilling silence after disclosure. They also recognized that nurses had a role in the process as part of an interprofessional team. Nurses can develop advocacy care and empower family members in the preparation of safe HIV disclosure. By systematizing and institutionalizing the care advocacy process, nurses may enable caretakers and children to participate in their therapeutic management, improving adherence to the treatment and self‐care with autonomy. (shrink)

Should professors engage in classroom advocacy? One argument against such advocacy is the autonomy argument offered by Joel Kupperman. Advocacy, in the sense that Kupperman is concerned with, undermines a student’s making informed decisions about important issues. This paper seeks to do three things. First, it seeks to clarify Kupperman’s autonomy argument.Second, this paper extends the argument against advocacy by buttressing the autonomy argument with an argument from citizenship. This will strengthen Kupperman’s general rule against (...) class='Hi'>advocacy by expanding beyond concerns merely with individuals to cases where the concern is with groups, at least where the groups are composed of citizens.Last, while the autonomy argument provides a general prohibition against advocacy, it might permit exceptions, as does the citizenship argument. Thus, final part of this paper considers business ethics courses as a possible example for where exceptions might take place. (shrink)

Stephen L. Pepper argues that lawyers and clients often act together in ways that their moral convictions would prevent them from acting individually. In an attempt to address this problem, I explore the nature of the attorney's responsibility to help her client reach autonomous decisions. To do this, I review the work of some prominent medical ethicists on a parallel to Pepper's problem in doctor-patient relationships.

Human being is essentially a homo theologicus. Its thinking is a theologal way of being. The origin of theological thinking is the onto-existential condition of man as being in the world toward the Transcendence through death in the quest for Meaning. Transcendence is the perfect union of the ontological (Being) and the epistemological (Meaning) in an analogical relationship with the identity between “kalon” and “agathon” as present in Plato. There is an essential correspondence between Being and Meaning that has ontological (...) preeminence over the correspondence between Being and time. The present paper examines Heidegger’s main onto-existential categories in the horizon opened by E. Stein and V. Frankl. A critical approach to Heidegger’s anthropological ontology is carried out aiming to develop a theandric ontology of Dasein. A provisional general definition of the homo theologicus is acquired, in which human being is thought of as thankful thinking in the perpetual celebration of Meaning. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 48-50.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Advocacy, Therapy, and PedagogyJohn E. MacKinnonBeyond Political Correctness: Toward the Inclusive University, edited by Stephen Richer and Lorna Weir; 272 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995, $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.Anyone who would doubt the relevance of philosophy to public affairs ought to attend to the unhappy evolution of the Canadian university. On campuses across the country in recent years, speech codes have been introduced, the “re-education” of (...) professors urged, visiting speakers on controversial subjects silenced, and classes monitored by administrators eager to do the bidding of various special interest groups. As universities have come more and more to see their role as that of some sort of multipurpose social project, education itself has become less pressing a priority. Thus, while money is found to hire sexual harassment officers, employment equity advisors and “wellness” mavens, academic posts disappear. Those that remain are frequently filled in accordance with crass gender and race-based quotas, and when that fails to guarantee positions for members of bureaucratically favored groups, contrived “schools” and pseudodisciplines proliferate. Many of these developments, however, are simply the manifestation of trickle-down deconstruction, trickle-down Rortyism, trickle-down “politics of difference,” of the sort that Charles Taylor is prone to rhapsodize. Notions of value, nature and merit, of equality, universality and objectivity are dismissed as mere inventions, “imperial” notions designed to favor the powerful and oppress the disenfranchised. The art [End Page 492] of spoken and written argument, with their ideals of detachment and discipline, are taken as evidence of a smug “androcentrism,” while rationality itself is derided as a “regime” that works “to maintain patriarchal control of knowledge and knowledge production.” Even the notion of evaluating students by means of essays and exams is ridiculed as scandalously “non-feminist.” While past attacks on academic independence have tended to come from outside the university, Canadian academics over the past decade have slavishly accepted their own domestication. More disconcerting still has been the role of pliant university presidents, most of whom have proved eager to unburden themselves of the inconvenience of scholarship and to indulge the cosmological musings of the radical left.Beyond Political Correctness: Toward the Inclusive University bristles both with resentment that such criticisms should even be aired and paranoia about their motivation. According to its contributors, the challenge to political correctness—the very use of the term as an epithet—is the result of a “neo-conservative” attack that has been orchestrated in and “imported” wholesale from the United States (to morally smug Canadians, there can be no more dastardly provenance) and insinuated into public debate by a servile media. The first two articles in the collection, by Dorothy Smith and Lorna Weir respectively, pursue this very theme. Each betrays that dreary habit, particularly prevalent among social scientists, of rendering imposingly technical the most bracingly trite. For instance, Smith writes: “The textuality of public text-mediated discourse is essential to its peculiar temporal and spatial properties of ubiquity and constancy of replication across multiple and various actual situations of watching, reading, or hearing” (p. 25). Translation? The more one sees, reads or hears a view expressed, the more one tends to believe it’s true. Her concern here, of course, is to establish that whoever controls the means of public debate controls its terms as well, that those means happen to be controlled by neo-conservative interests bent on retarding social progress, and that growing public disquiet about educational reform simply confirms the success of that neo-conservative strategy. But the failure of Smith’s account goes far beyond the thoroughly rebarbative nature of her expression.According to Smith, the very term, “political correctness,” is shorthand for an “ideological code” that has been expressly designed by “neo-conservatives” to caricature the good works of the visionary left. An ideological code, she says, operates as a “free-floating form of control,” which, once established, is “self-reproducing” (p. 27). Now, [End Page 493] the trouble with this picture is that it can account only for ascendant ideological codes, those that are successfully transmitted and progressively consolidated. And yet, in recent years, the ideological code of the left has to a considerable extent... (shrink)

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in history to grant constitutional rights to nature. What is termed the indigenous symbol played a significant role in this event. The rights of nature are used as an occasion to interrogate the indigenous symbol in order to reveal what it does, as opposed to what it says. The account of the rights of nature originating in indigenous sensibilities is presented, and subsequently critiqued. The argument makes use of the notion of representative claim (...) to show the strategic construction of indigeneity as ecologically harmonious. An alternative genesis of the rights of nature is presented. It is further showed that the indigenous symbol is employed as a veneer of moral authority hiding the strategic machinations of representative politics. (shrink)

Background The practice of health advocacy in nursing has been defined as a process aimed at promoting the independence and autonomy of users of health services, in addition to providing information on healthcare decision-making and offering support for decisions taken. Ethical considerations Ethics approval was not required to conduct this review. Aim This integrative review aims to synthesize evidence in the literature on health advocacy in professional nursing practice. Methods An integrative review methodology guided by Whittemore and Knalf (...) was used. Studies were identified by conducting searches on PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, and LILACS databases. Of 2179 records, 34 studies matched the inclusion criteria. Results The main aspects involved in the practice of health advocacy by professional nurses are related to the ethical principles of the nursing profession, such as protecting patients seeking autonomy and care. Furthermore, the practice of health advocacy by nurses requires an empathetic attitude, responsibility, and assertive communication. Conclusion The diverse possibilities for the practice of advocacy synthesized in this study allow nurses to approach and become familiarized with the topic, being able to acquire and complement knowledge that will reflect on their professional practice in different work environments such as the educational field, in hospital practice, or basic health care. (shrink)

The concept of civil society has once again emerged as a viable mechanism for developing and sustaining deliberative democracy. However, an essential component of many strategies to sustain civil society appears lacking, especially when we see the growing cynicism and apathy among citizens. What is missing is a strategy for training or encouraging citizens to participate more fully in civil society. The skills of advocacy can, at least in part, help renew civic activism. Thus, the role of advocacy (...) will be explored as a potential way to resuscitate civil society. (shrink)

The Great Recession of 2008 underscored the precarity of housing for many people living in the United States, as well as the unequal conditions that structure housing policy and practices. Victimized by predatory lending practices, many families lost their homes as a speculative housing bubble burst. Facing tremendous uncertainty, these families joined tens of thousands of others across the country who struggle with housing for a variety of reasons—leaving an abusive partner, struggling with medical and other unforeseen expenses, coping with (...) addiction and/or mental illness, and more. Indeed, as Melanie Loehwing explains in her important new book, “housed” and “unhoused” represent not fixed categories or stable life... (shrink)

Every school needs an advocate leader who can influence others to address issues, concerns, and problems that affect education, its quality, access, and the welfare of the stakeholders, especially that of the learners. This leader needs to subscribe to the redefined roles and nature of leadership. Advocacy leadership challenges educational leaders to take a progressive stance on pressing educational issues and problems. The next in line leaders need to awaken in themselves a specific advocacy and tune-in to this (...) new trend. With this, a qualitative inquiry explored the educational advocacies of twenty graduate students involved in focus group discussions and interviews. Using the thematic network as an analytical framework, the inquiry identified 46 keywords, 51 basic themes, and 6 organizing themes. Thus, a new thematic network of educational advocacies was generated. Learners’ welfare was the most dominant educational advocacy of graduate students, while leadership and governance, professional development, culture and religion, safety and environmental protection, and community development were considered as developing and noteworthy advocacies. These educational advocacies were deemed interconnected and interdependent to each other. Also, the study comes up with relevant propositions, while it makes recommendations for further research and utilization of the new framework. The results have implications for revisiting the educational administration curriculum by mapping out the subjects that contribute to the development of educational advocacy. (shrink)

Given that personal source of information is preferred by the customers over company-generated marketing communications, promoting advocacy behavior among customers is of much importance for every organization. Literature suggests that an organization's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities significantly influence individual behavior. However, the advocacy behavior of customers (ADB), from a CSR perspective, did not receive due attention. To address this literature gap, the current study attempts to explore the relationship among CSR and ADB with the intervening role of (...) brand admiration (BA). To collect the data, customers of a large fast-food service organization in Pakistan were approached. The proposed relationships were tested through the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The statistical evidence verifies a positive link between CSR and ADB, while BA mediated this relationship. These findings will be supportive to the fast-food business to realize the critical role of CSR for a meaningful customer-company relationship in the face of competition. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted in-person dispute resolution proceedings, leading to the rapid adoption of digital technologies for remote hearings in international arbitration. The use of these technologies has opened up new possibilities for enhancing procedures, improving efficiency, and streamlining processes. However, it also raises concerns about transparency and authenticity in virtual hearings. This paper explores the impact of digital technologies on the semiotics of law and legal communication in international arbitration, considering the intersections between new technologies and persuasion. Based on (...) practices like the use of e-evidence, debates surrounding remote hearings, and the formulation of standards for stakeholders’ behavior, the study takes a practice-based approach, exploring cognitive processes, such as memory and attention, and their influence on the behavior of counsel, arbitrators, and witnesses in remote hearings. It highlights the key issues, findings, challenges, and future research opportunities arising from the introduction of digital technologies in this field, including considerations on how stakeholders of a virtual hearings are affected by the unique features of the digital environment. (shrink)