title: Individual patient advocacy, collective responsibility and activism within professional nursing associations.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. margaretmahlin@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Margaret
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mahlin
mesh_terms: D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010344:Patient Advocacy; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012956:Societies, Nursing