Advocacy is an essential component of the registered nurse’s professional role, yet experts provide no consistent definition of advocacy. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of military nurses as they engage in advocating practices and to describe their shared practices and common meanings. Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology, provided the framework and method for this study. Twenty-four U.S. Army nurses were individually interviewed and the researcher kept interview observational notes. The constant comparative method of analysis was used. The stories of these nurses revealed one constitutive pattern—safeguarding—and four related themes. The themes were advocating as protecting, advocating as attending the whole person, advocating as being the patient’s voice, and advocating as preserving personhood. One conclusion was that military nurses must be prepared for the important safe-guarding role. They must be coached in how to deal with other members of the health team on the patient’s behalf.
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