| Professional Registered Nurses are commonly described as patient advocates. Yet nurses continue to struggle for control of their professional practice. Cho's (1996, 1997b) Conceptual Structure for Client Advocacy guided this exploratory, correlational and descriptive study. It was hypothesized that nurses prefer patient advocacy and that their Preferred Advocacy types differ from the types of Advocacy Decisions they make. Research Questions were posed to examine the relationship between theoretically cited institutional and personal variables and the Preferred Advocacy choices and actual Advocacy Decision choices of RNs.; A case vignette and a questionnaire were used to gather data. Staff registered professional nurses (n = 300), employed in acute care adult in-patient hospitals responded. Statistical methods included frequencies, independent sample t-tests, chi-square and logistic regressions.; Associated independent variables differed when analyzed by single prediction methods and binary logistic regression techniques, showing an interaction effect among the variables. Significant associations were demonstrated by binary logistic regression analyses for Preferred Advocacy types and Willingness to Lose Job, Willingness to Live with a Guilty Conscience, Professionalism and Management Type. No significant associations were demonstrated between the independent variables and Advocacy Decision. Implications and future directions were suggested to influence recruitment, education and retention of nurses for schools and practice settings. |
