Patient advocacy

It has been suggested that portions of Health advocacy (about advocacy for individual patients) be split from it and merged into this article. (Discuss) (October 2017)

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Patient advocacy is a process in health care concerned with advocacy for patients, survivors, and caregivers. The patient advocate^[1] may be an individual or an organization, concerned with healthcare standards or with one specific group of disorders. The terms patient advocate and patient advocacy can refer both to individual advocates providing services that organizations also provide, and to organizations whose functions extend to individual patients. Some patient advocates are independent (with no conflict-of-loyalty issues) and some work for the organizations that are directly responsible for the patient's care.

Typical advocacy activities are the following: safeguarding patients from errors, incompetence and misconduct; patient rights, matters of privacy, confidentiality or informed consent, patient representation, awareness-building, support and education of patients, survivors and their carers.^[2]

Patient advocates give a voice to patients, survivors and their carers on healthcare-related (public) fora, informing the public, the political and regulatory world, health care providers (hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies etc.), organizations of health care professionals, the educational world, and the medical and pharmaceutical research communities.

Nurses can perform a de facto role of patient advocacy, though this role may be limited due their position in an organization.^[2] Patients can advocate for themselves through self-advocacy and the ability for this self-advocacy can be learnt or improved through training.^[3]