The nurse as advocate: drivers and challenges
Two chapters, two very different arenas — a state legislature and a corporate board — and then the part that carries the brief: comparing their drivers and challenges with your own record as an advocate, however small it is.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 15, 2026
Two chapters, then your own advocacy record
The brief opens with a claim worth taking seriously rather than skimming: advocacy processes have commonalities that transcend their subject, and differences that are nuanced rather than obvious. Read the two assigned chapters looking for both. The commonalities are usually structural — a triggering experience, usually clinical and usually a case where the system rather than the disease produced the harm; the recognition that individual intervention could not fix what was going wrong; the acquisition of a language and a set of relationships in an arena the nurse was not trained for; and persistence through repeated failure. The differences are in the arena and its currency. A legislator works with votes, constituencies, committee process and public argument; a board member works with fiduciary duty, financial framing and a small room where the decisive conversation is often private. Name that difference rather than treating both as leadership.
Handle the drivers and the challenges as separate questions, since the brief lists them separately. Drivers are what moved each person from noticing to acting, and the honest answer usually includes something personal alongside the professional. Challenges should be reported as each author actually identified them — credibility in a room that does not recognise nursing expertise, the time and money cost of a campaign, isolation from colleagues who see advocacy as a distraction from care, and the difficulty of translating clinical knowledge into an argument the arena accepts. Then the comparison with your own experience, which is where the brief's real work is. Take the phrase 'as an advocate' broadly and honestly: advocating for one patient against a discharge decision, raising a safety concern, arguing for a staffing change. Say which of the drivers you recognise, which challenges you have met and which you have not.Five pages, APA.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Identify the structural commonalities in how nurses become advocates.
- 02Distinguish advocacy arenas by the currency each operates in.
- 03Report challenges as the authors themselves identified them.
- 04Compare a published account with your own experience honestly.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A five-page APA brief.
- 02The drivers for each of the two individuals.
- 03The challenges each identified in their own writing.
- 04An analysis comparing both with your own advocacy experience.
- 05APA citations, including the assigned chapters.
Drivers, challenges, then the comparison
What the two accounts share
Identify the common pathway from clinical experience to structural action.
Drivers for each individual
Say what moved each from noticing to acting, including personal factors.
Challenges as they identified them
Report credibility, cost, isolation and translation difficulties from the texts.
The two arenas compared
Contrast legislative process with fiduciary and financial framing.
Your own record
Compare honestly, naming what you have and have not encountered.
Sources on nursing advocacy pathways
Recommended databases
- The assigned Taking Action chapters
- American Nurses Association advocacy resources
- PubMed Central
- CINAHL
Search sequence
- 1.Read both chapters closely and note the challenges in the authors' own words before drafting.
- 2.Look up a framework for policy influence so the drivers can be named rather than described.
- 3.Search for evidence on barriers to nurses' political participation, which corroborates the challenges.
- 4.Decide your own example first, since the comparison section is what the brief is built around.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Legislative and Political Advocacy for Nurses
American Nurses Association · 2024
The profession's own account of advocacy pathways, which supplies the vocabulary for naming the drivers.
- 02
The Barriers and Facilitators Influencing Nurses' Political Participation
Journal of Nursing Management · 2024
A systematic review of what enables and blocks nurses' political participation — the challenges evidenced.
- 03
AONL Nurse Leader Core Competencies
American Organization for Nursing Leadership · 2024
Locates influence and advocacy inside the formal competency set, useful for the board-room arena.
- 04
Policy Briefs and Advocacy
American Public Health Association · 2024
Shows what a developed policy position looks like, a reference point for the legislative arena.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Summarising the chapters instead of analysing drivers and challenges separately.
- Treating the legislature and the board room as the same arena.
- Inventing challenges rather than reporting the ones the authors named.
- Claiming no advocacy experience, when patient-level advocacy counts.
- Omitting the comparison, which is the brief's actual requirement.
Submission checklist
- Are drivers and challenges handled as separate questions?
- Have you distinguished the two arenas and their currencies?
- Are the challenges the ones the authors identified?
- Does the comparison include something you have actually done?
- Have you said what would have to change for you to act at their level?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.