Please respond to the following post with a long paragraph, with a response to the following paragraph with your opinion, add citations and references.

The role of a nurse is to provide holistic, competent care to the patients and families that we are caring for. My definition of advocacy is speaking up for our patients, families, and ourselves to provide the most optimal safe care. Nurses are advocates for our patients every day. We are their voice when they can’t speak or even when they can speak. We listen to their concerns and questions and we get the answers if we can’t answer them. We advocate for their patient rights, culture, religion, etc. Being an advocate is part of being a great nurse. I take care of a lot of ventilated and sedated patients in the ICU, they don’t have a voice during this time so I have to be their voice. One situation that I remember very well was a post C-Section that came into the Surgical ICU post op that required multiple transfusions throughout the day. She was intubated and sedated and her blood pressure wasn’t stable which required vasopressors. She had delivered a healthy baby with no complications and the baby was placed in the nursery during all of this. This was her first child. As an advocate for her, I pulled in the medical team at her bedside and recommended that once she stabilized if we could get the nursery and the father to bring the baby into the SICU so she could touch and hear the baby. What I was asking and advocating for was also against SICU policy. The team thought it was an excellent idea even though it was against policy but this was in the patients and families benefit. In my mind, that’s all a mother longs to do is hold and touch their newborn baby. This patient didn’t get that opportunity due to her circumstances. Later that evening, the nursery brought the baby in and we placed the baby in her arms. We told the mother that her baby was in her arms and that her husband was there as well. The next day the patient was taken off the ventilator and was doing much better. I feel that me advocating for her and her baby helped her heal. If I didn’t advocate for her she would have never been able to touch her baby when she probably needed it the most.