2. How can you be a patient advocate without alienating the staff ?

You have just been hired as a new nurse manager on a busy pediatric unit in a large metropolitan hospital. Th e hospital provides services for a culturally diverse population, including African American, Asian, and Hispanic people. Family members often practice alternative healing specifi c to their culture, for example, bringing special foods from home to entice a sick child to eat. One of the more experienced nurses said to you, “We need to discourage these people from fooling with all this hocus-pocus. We are trying to get their sick kid well in the time allowed under their managed care plans, and all this medicine-man stuff is only keeping the kid sick longer. Besides, all this food stinks up the rooms and brings in bugs.” You have observed how important these healing rituals and foods are to the patients and families and believe that both the families and the children have benefi ted from this nontraditional approach to healing.