Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
Nurs Ethics. 2010 Mar;17(2):247-54. doi: 10.1177/0969733009351949.
The systemic difficulties of health care in the USA have brought to light another issue in nurse-patient advocacy - those who require care yet have inadequate or non-existent access. Patient advocacy has focused on individual nurses who in turn advocate for individual patients, yet, while supporting individual patients is a worthy goal of patient advocacy, systemic problems cannot be adequately addressed in this way. The difficulties nurses face when advocating for patients is well documented in the nursing literature and I argue that, through collective advocacy, professional nursing associations ought to extend the reach of individual nurses in order to address systemic problems in health care institutions and bureaucracies.
美国医疗体系的种种困难凸显了护士-患者倡导工作中的另一个问题，即那些需要护理但却无法获得或根本无法获得护理的人。患者倡导工作主要集中在那些为个别患者争取权益的个别护士身上，但尽管支持个别患者是患者倡导工作的一个有价值目标，但这种方式无法充分解决系统性问题。护士在为患者争取权益时所面临的困难在护理文献中有充分记录，我认为，通过集体倡导，专业护理协会应该扩大个别护士的影响力，以解决医疗机构和官僚机构中的系统性问题。
