Overview

The purpose of this course is to define, describe, apply, and evaluate the advocacy role of the nurse in caring for the elderly. Advocacy of the elderly presents particularly difficult challenges for nurses. This course outlines the source of, and reasons for, some of these more specific health care related problems. While all persons are vulnerable to health care concerns and may require nursing actions to address them, this course focuses on strategies that are specifically aimed at increasing the capacity of elderly persons to meet their health care needs.

This course describes principles of ethics and advocacy that will be helpful to the nurse in understanding the scope and limits of professional responsibilities of nurse advocacy for persons as they age. Cases will be used to demonstrate application of the nurse advocacy role in selected patient care situations.