"How can I make it better?": Teaching, learning, and embodying patient advocacy in an urban hospital
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This research explores the concept of patient advocacy by looking at how participants define, learn, embody, and teach the actions and attitude of advocacy within the OB/GYN department of Boston Medical Center. Much of the existing research on patient advocacy comes from nursing literature and centers on nurses’ experiences advocating for patients. This research explores the historical meanings of advocacy and analyzes, through interviews with residents, fellows, attendings, and curriculum designers, how these tenets of advocacy have been adapted for use in Obstetrics and Gynecology’s BEACON clinic. I also look at both formal and informal curricular approaches to teaching advocacy, and about the experience of being an advocate in a safety-net setting. I aim to understand how the OB/GYN department intentionally curated its learning environment to cultivate the next generation of OB/GYNs who advocate for their patients. Through these observations, I argue that “advocacy” is less a set of knowledge or principles than it is a contextual practice that requires the embodiment of particular attitudes in settings that support this ethos at multiple levels of educational formation.
Description
2025
License
Attribution 4.0 International