The Role of Healthcare Advocacy in Pediatric Care

Healthcare advocacy is especially vital in pediatric care. Let's explore the benefits of a nurse advocate and how to hire one

Pediatric doctor with mother and daughter | Healthcare Advocacy concept
Representational Photo | Image by DC Studio on Freepik

You can hire a healthcare advocate during any medical treatment or for any type of consultation. Nevertheless, these experts are especially vital in pediatric care. “Parents are willing to spend top dollar to ensure complete medical protection and assistance for their kids,” according to GNANOW.org.

By partnering with these experts, you can overcome numerous bureaucratic hurdles that are common in healthcare. These professionals can also give patients high-quality advice and point them to the best medical providers. Lastly, a healthcare advocate can assist with insurance claims and coverage, which can be crucial when things go awry.

In this article, we’ll explain the benefits of a nurse advocate and what to look for when hiring these professionals.

How Does Healthcare Advocacy Help?

Healthcare advocacy is a process of assisting patients and ensuring their rights are fulfilled. With a licensed nurse advocate in your corner, you can learn more about your condition, recommended process, and potential outcomes. Specifically, a nurse advocate can assist you with the following things:

  • Clarifying doctor’s instruction and diagnosis
  • Communicating the patient’s desires to the healthcare provider
  • Assessing and recommending available providers
  • Eliminating any problems with health coverage.

Basically, a healthcare advocate is meant to support your child during the entire treatment. These experts can teach parents about the kid’s condition, and find the best course of action. They can also ensure placement in a hospital, arrange transportation for your child, and go through all accompanied bills.

In other words, these healthcare professionals can do everything you need, aside from giving you direct medical assistance. Some of the best, most reputable advocates even work with governmental institutions so that better laws are enacted for patients.

How Do You Benefit from a Healthcare Advocate?

In a way, a nurse advocate helps patients get ahold of their destiny. They empower people by providing them with better information and suggesting optimal providers and treatments. While they can’t cure your illness, nor can they prescribe drugs, they can get you in touch with the best providers and teach you about the best treatment practices.

A nurse advocate ensures much better outcomes for their clients. They can teach parents and kids how to behave in specific situations while also getting them the optimal support. Even though you need to pay good money to hire excellent patient advocates, they usually pay for themselves as they can reduce your medical bills.

How to Find the Best Nurse Advocate?

Like with any other provider, the results can vary significantly based on the nurse’s expertise. Some of them will help solve a few minor issues, while others can ensure complete protection for your child. Because of that, it’s vital that you find an elite expert who checks all the boxes.

That being said, these are the things you should pay attention to when hiring one of these specialists:

1. Necessary Qualifications

The first thing you need to check with a patient advocate is their qualification. A person needs to be a registered nurse who has finished a specialized school or has received a bachelor’s degree. The person should also possess all the necessary qualifications for performing this job, which includes internships and training.

2. Communicative Personality

While nurse advocates have to understand medicine, and specifically pediatrics, they’re not practitioners, per se. Instead, they mostly perform the function of an administrative worker. A nurse advocate is meant to find the best support, schedule appointments, negotiate terms, and secure better accommodation.

Because of that, it’s much better to find a communicative person who knows how to deal with people than hire someone who’s great at medicine but lacks people skills. Your provider should be able to tackle any type of conflict and perform the role of mediator between yourself and medical institutions (as well as insurers).

3. Attention to Detail

A nurse advocate has to tackle a lot of bureaucracy for its pediatrics patients. The professional has to deal with scheduling appointments, hospital accommodation, transport, as well as to go through all the receipts and documents. Because of that, it’s much better to hire someone who’s disciplined, tidy, and can multitask.

If this person is also knowledgeable enough, they might give you a few valuable tips regarding your treatment. Insightful, experienced nurse advocates usually know a thing or two about pediatrics and can almost replace the standard nurse practitioners when it comes to advising (although you’ll still need regular treatment).

4. High Resilience

People usually hire nurse advocates for complicated, chronic, and life-threatening cases. There are many cases where a provider works with patient for several years, serving as a valuable liaison between the family and third-party entities. Due to the nature of the treatment, a nurse has to be resilient and dedicated to the cause for optimal results.

5. Empathy

It goes without saying that your provider needs to have a high degree of empathy. Similar to doctors, these providers have to be firm believers in the Hippocratic Oath, valuing the patient’s health, safety, and privacy.

Empathy is especially vital when dealing with little kids, as they require a hands-on approach. Although parents are the ones who will manage most of the things, the nurse still has to interact with the child on some level. Because of that, parents have to find someone who exemplifies all these qualities and has the patient’s best interest in mind.

6. Dedication to Excellence

Due to the complexity of the advocacy process, you need someone who’s in touch with the latest best practices. The person should be dedicated to their craft, both in terms of administrative work and medical advice. So, make sure to find someone who’s accomplished, who often attends workshops, and who has stellar reviews from former users.

Summing up

Hiring a patient advocate is the best thing you can do for your child. These professionals can find the best medical care for your kid, as well as tackle all the administrative nonsense you need to go through. At the end of the day, hiring a nurse advocate is much cheaper than doing these things yourself, especially given that a medical professional can help you with insurance.

Magnifying lens over an exclamation markSpot an error in this article? A typo maybe? Or an incorrect source? Let us know!

Avatar
CW Staff writers are part of the research and editorial team at Complete Wellbeing. Every staff writer works under the guidance of the editor and seeks special inputs from our empaneled experts, whenever needed.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here