Understanding Patient Advocacy
Every healthcare provider, from the blue color worker whose primary responsibility is the maintenance of operating room suite furnishings, to the cardiac surgeon performing high risk, complicated and life-saving surgery, should be a patient advocate. Learn more about what being a patient advocate means.
What exactly is patient advocacy?
The moment a patient makes a decision to trust their life, health and wellbeing to another person, that person takes on an advocates’ responsibility to protect the rights of the patient.
What rights need protecting?
The right to privacy. This includes all of the following:
- Billing information
- Social security number
- Age
- Health information (such as blood type, reason for seeking health care, etc)
- Charts, reports or other records
The right to be treated in a fair and unbiased manner. Patients should be treated with respect and given equal opportunity to the same level of health care as others, all of which regardless of a patient’s:
- Sex
- Religion
- National origin
- Sexual orientation
- Insurance
- Age
An example of this would be the Medicare patient given the same treatment as the private patient.
The right to be treated with dignity.
Patient’s undergoing procedures in the hospital are often stripped of their clothing, glasses, hearing aids, jewelry, etc. Healthcare workers may take it for granted that the patient understands the importance of this and may not fully explain when they are going to be touched, such as when electrodes for EKG are being placed on the patient’s skin, or uncovered, as when a stethoscope is placed on the chest to allow the worker to listen to the heart. The surgery patient needs advocacy the most.
Keeping equipment safe and the environment clean to further protect the patient is the most basic tenets of advocacy. It demonstrates the importance of each and every member of the healthcare team, from the housekeeper to the anesthesiologist.
What are you doing in your healthcare clinic or facility to ensure that each member of your team is a patient advocate?
Comment to let us know!