Objective(s): patients are considered a vulnerable group within various sectors of the healthcare system and therefore require protection and advocacy. “Health advocacy” and the concept of the “physician advocate” are legal in nature and have been introduced into various fields, including medical education, over the past two decades. While these concepts aim to protect patients’ rights, they also grant substantial authority and responsibilities to physician advocates. This research aims to reviewing the scope of studies and Explaining the conceptual field of health advocacy and the role of the health advocate physician has been done.
Methods: A Scoping review for study background and a conceptual review for the typology was done.
The tool of collection was taking note of written documents that by searching for the keywords – health advocacy, physician advocacy, role of advocate, physician advocate - in search engines and scientific databases and a cumulative search based on the references of available documents was done. The selection of documents was based on criteria-oriented purposeful method (1.matching the title, 2.matching the keywords, 3.more valid, more indexed, more cited, 4.more relevant, more meaningful). Finally, 29 full-text documents were selected and reviewed.
Results: The research scope of the subject was recorded. In the typology, 2 levels of advocacy were identified, including micro advocacy and macro advocacy. Also, 5 types of advocacy and their related advocate roles were identified: Patient right and autonomy (Patient right and autonomy advocate), representational advocacy (patient representative), Empowerment and Facilitation (empower and facilitator), social activism (social activist) and Policy activism (social reformer and Policy activist) was identified.
Conclusion: Playing the role of advocate in health advocacy, is a process which includes advocacy at the smallest (Patients Self-determination advocacy) and the largest (reforming Health-social policies) level. This research, while determining the study scope; presented a typology and conceptual model of this new subject, which can be used as a suggested in medical education.