Administrator’s Support and Practice on Patient Advocacy of Nurses in Operation Theatre in Songklanagarind Hospital

Abstract

This descriptive research aimed to examine the level of perception of administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy, the level of patient advocacy behaviors of perioperative nurses, and the relationship between the administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy and the patient advocacy behaviors of perioperative nurses. The participants consisted of 91 registered nurses working in the operating room at Songklanagarind Hospital. The instruments of this study were a administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy questionnaire and a perioperative nurses’ patient advocacy behaviors questionnaire. Both of them were developed by using the ten patient’s rights as a framework. The content validity of the questionnaires was verified by three experts. The reliability of them was tested by using Cronbach’s alpha and the results for the administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy questionnaire and the perioperative nurses’ patient advocacy behaviors questionnaire were 0.92 and 0.72 respectively. The data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and Pearson’s product correlation coefficient.

The result of this study indicated that perioperative nurses perceived administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy at a high level (X = 3.85, SD = 0.40). The support perceived most by nurses was the posting by administrators of patient’s rights in the unit in order that patients and their families can see it. The level of nurse’s practices of patient advocacy behaviors of perioperative nurses was at a high level (X = 3.86, SD = 0.56). The nurse’s practice of patient advocacy behaviors that was most performed was equitably providing care to either regular or special patients. Furthermore, administrator’s support regarding patient advocacy had a significant positive correlation with patient advocacy behaviors of operative nurses at a level of 0.05 (r = 0.45).

The results can be used as a guide for administrator to enhance the knowledge regarding nursing practice of patient advocacy for perioperative nurses to develop quality of care.