A Content Analysis of the Advocacy Concept Perceived by Nurses at Nursery Room

옹호개념에 관한 신생아실 간호사의 인지 내용 분석

This descriptive study was done to detect the possibilities of the development of the advocacy concept in nursing. The subjects consisted of 3 nurses who had agreed to participate to the study, working at nursery room in a general hospital. Data was collected from May 22 to June 13 in 1995 through tape recorded intensive-interview, and written down, then content analyzed qualitatively related to the infant advocacy. 1. Derivation fo the meaning about advocacy concept 1) The situations in need of infant advocacy were 12 categories : malpractice, overcharing, negligence, unnecessary services, and services without consent, and so on. 2) Fourteen categories of advocacy activities percived by nurses were derived from participants' statements. Protesting infant or his /her families against their counterpart, providing informations to families, cooperating with medical staffs for her patient, then calling medical staff not so as to be maleficient to her patient in its rank. 3) The expected result of advocacy activities perceived by nurses was respectively positive to her patient or families, but negative to nurse. 4) The feelings of nurses in the sitution of advocacy were expressed in to concern, comprehension, regret, powerlessness, charity, desire, and so on. 5) Nurses perceived that advocacy activities could be influenced positively by factors related to nurses' qualification and negatively by factors related to doctor's overdo and nurse's underdo. 2. Categorization of the meaning and their relationships In case of antecedental situation in need of infant advocacy, nurse perceives her patients need the advocacy to get a benefit through nurse's information, intervention speaking, building cooperations. The expected factors to influence advocacy activities perceived by nurses, are the power imbalance between medical staffs, the nurse's qualification, and the nurse's feeling from the situation. The above results suggest that the infant care situation will be recommendable field work place for concept development of advocacy with hybride model when it involves infant's families.