Are you looking for guidance on how to advocate for your patients? Or for recognition of cancer nursing in your country? Or do you even have an ambition to improve policy in cancer nursing and occupational health? You can use the EONS Advocacy Toolkit to guide you!

Download it here or from the Further Information column of this page.

One of the aims of the EONS Advocacy Working Group was to create a practical guide for nurses to become advocates in their field of cancer nursing. This document is meant to help raise awareness and to influence policy on the importance of cancer nurses’ working conditions, but also describes how to advocate for education and of course for cancer patients. EONS wants all nurses to be able to become advocates.

However, advocacy is a large topic which is not translated the same way in different languages. The definition of advocacy does not make things easier. Most commonly known to all nurses is their ability to advocate for their patients and to be their voice. However, nurses have a crucial role in advocating for themselves and the whole of the healthcare system where they can have a role in influencing policy, legislation and in lobbying.

This advocacy toolkit starts with an introduction to advocacy in order to understand what it is in general terms and specifically in cancer nursing. Also, advocacy tools that can be used are described along with some good examples and a practical checklist is included for advocating.

Four targets in advocacy are discussed:

1) advocacy in general in order to get a better grasp of definitions;

2) advocacy for people affected by cancer as our most important pillar;

3) advocacy in nursing education to increase quality of care and create awareness among early career cancer nurses;

4) advocacy for cancer nurses, so nurses can back each other.