Application 3: Becoming a Leader in the Translation of Evidence to Practice
Leadership, in general, involves the art of influencing a team of individuals into achieving a set common goal. Therefore, a nurse leader is an individual with the capacity to represent the interests of the nursing profession. The critical tasks of a nurse leader involve; overseeing the overall integration of patient care in a health facility, manage both the medical teams and also managing patients, the constant development of treatment plans, evaluating and collecting of important treatment data, and constant coordination to ensure continued operations within the healthcare facility (Buil et al., 2019). The role of a nurse leader is of great importance, and, therefore, the process of appointing one involves rigorous scrutiny and detailed evaluation to ensure that an individual has the desired capability to deliver accordingly.
While a nurse leader has many roles, advocation for policy change is vital, especially if the nurse leader has existing best practices and approaches to mitigate an existing problem (Andermann et al., 2016). A nurse leader prioritizes quality health care to the general population while concurrently ensuring that the medical health service providers are at their optimum peak performance. As a prospective nurse leader, I would be the first to advocate for better approaches to existing problems. This might involve advocating for policy change. I would highly rely on evidence-based research to increase my knowledge on specific areas that I feel might need constant improvement. I would, therefore, set aside a working budget, which would finance the purported research and use my findings to derive the best new approach that would be time-saving and cost-saving while subsequently improving the quality of care. Several new practice approaches might also require government involvement to facilitate the quick approval of desired approaches. Higher-level government involvement at times might also require the making of a policy into law. New approaches may also require the involvement of local authorities for approval, with an example being aspects such as public awareness on mental health. In such a presented scenario, the approval of these mass awareness programs requires authentication by authorities to ensure that the desired agenda is not mere propaganda. It is also necessary that a nurse leader advocates for the auditing of newly proposed approaches. This will determine whether the new approaches are feasible or not (Malterud et al., 2016).
Translating evidence in nursing can be easily defined as the process of creating research knowledge, then circulating and adopting it into nursing practice. In the translation of evidence, findings derived from research are actively integrated into clinical nursing practice to improve the quality of care provided to patients. Translating evidence, therefore, considers the aspect of improving efficiency in care provision, hence, strengthening the aspect of nursing practice and care delivery. With the use of evidence-based research, the nurse leader can eliminate bias and identify existing gaps in operations, hence, replacing them with new approaches that are designed to be more efficient and easier to implement (Girouard & Bailey, 2017).
In nursing, a policy arena is a word used to describe policymakers at all levels, including; local, national, and international levels. Policymaking is an integral aspect of the continued provision of quality medical services. Significant players in policymaking may include; institutions and specific stakeholders. Advocating for the use of new evidence-based practice approaches would call for the direct involvement of the policy arena so that they can push for its immediate approval. With its sufficient resources, the policy arena can also influence faster adoption of the proposed new evidence-based practice approaches.
Regarding policymaking by involving the policy arena, it is vital to consider the five stages of Howlett and Ramesh’s mode. The model states that the five stages of policymaking include; setting agendas, formulation of policies, adopting policies, implementing policies, and finally, the evaluation step. The involvement of the policy arena would occur in all stages (Miles & Scott, 2019). As a member of the policy arena, the government plays an essential role in the approval of policies. As a nurse leader, I would take up my role to negotiate with the policy arena and convince them to adopt new evidence-based approaches. Direct involvement with the government as a member of the policy arena might speed up transforming policies into law, hence enabling faster adoption of the new and better practices. I would also present evidence-based research to the policy arena to prove to them the efficiency of the new policy-based approaches. Considering that the policy arena has sufficient in