The Role of Advocacy in Nursing Diplomacy: A Qualitative Study

Background and Aim: In the past, the war was mainly a "hard war" using military means, but now its form has changed to a more "soft war" type, which is basically diplomacy-based. Health professions have also recently entered this field, and nurses are using diplomacy because of their occupational nature, their various roles including advocacy. Given the proximity of the concept of advocacy to the nature of diplomacy and negotiation, we aimed to investigate the role of advocacy of nursing managers in nursing diplomacy. Methods: This is a qualitative study with a conventional content analysis approach. Data were collected using in-depth unstructured interviews with 14 nurse managers at different levels through purposeful sampling. Results: After analyzing the data, three main categories of system advocacy (including subcategories: systematic thinking and holistic view, organizational affiliation), advocate for people (including subcategories: demonstrating the role of the nurse in service to people, the use of people-centered literature) and the use of advocacy in negotiation (including 3 subcategories: unifying positions with an emphasis on interests, finding common ground, focusing on the other sidechr('39')s concerns). Conclusion: The findings of this study indicates that nursing managers are involved in diplomacy and relying on the advocacy role that is less paid attention in the clinic. They use it to achieve their organizational goals.