Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Nursing advocacy is an essential aspect of nursing professionals' ethics that promotes patients' autonomy, safety, and rights. It seems that nurses' attitudes toward nursing advocacy can affect their role as patients' advocates and improve the nurse-patient relationship. This study aimed to investigate nurses' attitudes toward patient advocacy in educational hospitals in Kerman.The data for this descriptive-analytical study was collected using a self-administered questionnaire by quota sampling among 385 nurses from four teaching hospitals of Kerman and analyzed using the SPSS software including descriptive and inferential statistics. Overall the nurses' attitude toward nursing advocacy was relatively positive. There was a significant relationship among nurses' attitude and age, sex, nursing experience and participation in workshops, while we could find no significant relationship between nurses' level of education and their attitude. The nurses' attitude in mental hospitals was more appropriate than others, and the majority of participants were confident that they were suited for the advocacy role.The cognitive aspect of nurses' attitude was stronger than the behavioral aspect. Despite the lack of significant effect of education, more nursing experience led to more willingness to play the advocacy role. In psychiatric hospitals, nurses with more independence and stronger relationships with the patients became more familiar with the needs of patients so these nurses made more effort to defend them. It seems Iranian nurses have felt morally obligated to defend their patients for many years. In order to support nurses' advocacy role in our country, we believe it is necessary to reinforce this attitude in nurses through holding ethical workshops.