Factors influencing clinical nurses’ advocacy for people with disability

Abstract

Purpose: Clinical nurses are the ideal health care providers to advocate for vulnerable and underserved populations such as people with disability. This study aimed to understand factors influencing nursing advocacy for people with disability among clinical nurses.Methods: The subjects of this study were 186 clinical nurses who were working in three hospitals in B and D cities. Self-report questionnaires were used to collect the data. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 with descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and multiple regression analysis.Results: Clinical experience and esthetical nursing competency have positive correlations with nursing advocacy, and optimism-human rights has a negative correlation with nursing advocacy. Factors influencing nursing advocacy for people with disability were identified as patient directivity (<i>β</i>=0.36, <i>p</i>=.001), optimism-human rights (<i>β</i>=-0.18, <i>p</i>=.008) and clinical experience (≥10) (<i>β</i>=0.14, <i>p</i>=.036). The final model consisting of these factors explained 19% of the variance of nursing advocacy (F=14.99, <i>p</i>=.001).Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate the importance of developing and implementing nursing interventions that can improve patient directivity and optimism-human rights toward people with disability among clinical nurses. These nursing advocacy interventions can be provided as part of continuing education as well as the nursing curriculum.