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Running head: ADVOCACY

Advocacy
Enrico Staine, Lizz Dejong, Sienna Jeffers
Humber College

ADVOCACY
Part 1
For health care professionals (HCPs), advocacy is an important
contingent to account for. In general advocacy can be described as
support. To advocate for someone or something is to support their
interests. Two main types of advocacy involved in health care are patient
advocacy and professional advocacy. For registered massage therapists,
the ideals of patient advocacy are reflected in the Code of Ethics.
Specifically the principle of Responsibility to Society (Code of Ethics,
1996). Inherent in this responsibility is the patient autonomy.
The three of us have a variety of personal situations that we have
been and advocate for something. The first is from Sienna. I have been
an advocate for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer)
interests since I was quite young. Society is currently imbued with so
many micro-aggressions toward the LGBTQ community. A situation that
often happens is people making the comment thats gay to describe
negative situations. I often speak up when this happens to educate them
that it can be misconstrued as offensive to the LGBTQ community.
Enrico said: Some of my lifestyle choices put me in a situation where I
have to support my viewpoint and those choices with other people. The
main one that I can think of is nutrition and my decision to eliminate
animal products from my diet. There is a lot of bias and ignorance
regarding the topic, which makes it hard and redundant. Although at the
same time I think that advocating for what I do and believe in is the only
way I have to share and maybe change what other people think.. And
Lizz said: It is commonly said that guys go to the gym to lift weights and

ADVOCACY
girls go to the gym for strictly cardio purposes. My friend and I go to the
gym quite frequently, and the moment we walk towards the weights, or

ask someone if they are done with a certain machine, we get judgemental
looks and rude remarks about whether or not we can actually lift those
weights considering we are girls. I was an advocate in this situation
because I decided to take a stand by continuing to work out, and not let
their opinion affect my daily routine.These are some challenging times
for each of you. Thank you for sharing
4/4
Part 2
Two issues that are affecting massage therapists are professional
notoriety, and public notoriety. These are both huge issues for massage
therapists who are faced with great stigma. Professionally, HCPs generally
dont have a full awareness of the scope of practice massage therapists
adhere to. They are often the last in the chain to be referred or recognized
to be of help to patients. Generally speaking, the public often has even
less of an understanding of what massage therapists are doing. We have
all encountered friends and family members who even go so far as to
compare the profession to sex work. Many people have no idea that in
Ontario massage therapists are a regulated health profession, and have a
curriculum that is highly based in science and theory.
4/4
In order to combat this student massage therapists SMTs and RMTs,
can strive for excellence. There personal skills will inform the public.
Massage therapists can be advocates with who they are alone, their skills

ADVOCACY

will speak for themselves as they interact with the public and other HCPs.
Furthermore massage therapists can speak up when they herehear
uniformeduninformed ideas on who RMTs are, and what they do. Im not
quite clear on what you mean by this second idea 1/2
Part 3
After we highlighted our plan and shown Andrew our material for the
massage therapy awareness day, he suggested we make it more
interactive for the general public. He liked the outline and style of the
poster for our booth, and we decided to keep those colors and style for
the handouts too. Though instead of having three bowls respectively filled
with signs and symptoms, remedies and handouts, from which each
person visiting our booth can draw, he suggested to actively involve the
person, asking them to draw a cause and provide us with a natural
response to that stressor. Then we ask them to freeze in that response
and we analyze and break it down for them, actively providing an
explanation of how that is affecting their body, and how massage therapy
can help prevent it, manage it and possibly relieve it. Then we decided to
expand it even further including a post on Facebook through the
anonymous page spotted at Humber, asking students from Humber to
tell us what makes them stressed. This way we can show the page on a
laptop in our booth and have more tips and causes to expand our
argument and engage with the public.
I like the feedback, good ideas on your part as well.
5/5

ADVOCACY
14/15 overall=93.3=4.7%

References
College of Massage Therapists of Ontario. (1996). Code of Ethics.
Retrieved from http://www.cmto.com/cmtowordpress/assets/codeethics.pdf
Kalaitzidis, E., & Jewel, P., (2015). The Concept of Advocacy in Nursing: A
critical Analysis. The Health Care Manager, 34(4). 308-315

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