Nurses' Advocacy in an Australian Operating Department

• ACTING AS A PATIENT ADVOCATE in the OR is challenging for many nurses. Personal, professional, and organizational barriers to effective advocacy exist, and the term advocacy is not clearly defined in the context of nursing practice.

• FINDINGS from an ethnographic study conducted in an Australian operating department shed light on the way in which nurses experience the role of patient advocate in the OR.

• THIS ARTICLE explores nurses' perceptions of the barriers they face as patient advocates and the strategies used to address these barriers.