Nurses are the backbones of the medical system. The nursing profession is the largest in the U.S. healthcare industry. For seventeen consecutive years, nursing ranked the most trusted job in Gallop’s ethic survey (For the 17th Year in a Row, Nurses Top Gallup’s Poll of Most Trusted Profession | AHA News, 2019). With so many responsibilities in nursing, it is an obligation that nurses actively participate in the policy review. By involving in policy review, nurses draft and analyze policies to be in a better position to advocate for their patients. This post will discuss the opportunities that currently exist for RNs and APRNs to actively participate in policymaking.
One opportunity for RNs and APRNs to actively participate in policymaking is policy draft. Through policy drafts, nurses will be able to identify topics that will be critical for the next few years in healthcare. For example, Covid-19 pandemic really took a toll in U.S. healthcare industry. As of date, over 700,000 people have died from Covid-19 infection in America (CDC, 2020). Nurses played a significant role in the fight against Covid-19 and continue in the path to defeat this deadly virus. Professional experiences of the nurses who worked with Covid-19 infected patients speak volumes about how exhausted the healthcare system is. During the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines, professional nurses were argued to engage in the vaccine advocacy campaign. Advocacy is a skill that nurses often use in their career; therefore, pairing that skill with a policy draft will enable nurses to organize the policy document with operational benefits properly.
A well-drafted document will be easier to administer, maintain and enforce. Likewise, Rasheed et al. (2020, P 447, Para 2) stress the importance that “due to their close interactions with individuals and communities across the healthcare system, nurses can offer greater direct insights concerning the effect of healthcare policies on individuals and communities.” So, nurses need to be the drafters of the policies because it will reduce the overall amount of time an organization needs to spend on those activities, for example, vaccine advocacy programs. Appropriate content and specific knowledge and skills are essential in the policy document to avoid valuable time being wasted editing, discussing, and rewording statements that do not belong in the policy in the first place.
After completing a well-drafted policy document, nurses can participate in policy analysis and evaluate the current policy. They can make a judgment about what went well and what did not, “whom to involve in future efforts, whom to trust, what the most effective timing is, how to create more powerful coalitions, and so forth” (Yoder‐Wise, 2019, p 52). The evaluation step is crucial because it allows the group to determine how to protect the current success and strategies needed to succeed. However, there are challenges to these opportunities.
Policy drafting and analysis opportunities may present challenges because of poor technical knowledge and clinical skills and a lack of exposure to federal and state government involvement (Scott and Scott, 2020). These current opportunities present challenges that can be overcome by proper training regarding policy draft and analysis during undergraduate nursing level and, of course, at the graduate level, encouraging students and faculty to participate in politics for policymaking and visiting the state and federal policy places. Scott and Scott (2020) argue that establishing relationships with policymakers is one of the best methods to get your issue on their agenda; it is about who you know and how you can influence them to listen to you. Therefore, nurses must visit their local representatives to understand their stand on specific issues. For example, if the nurse advocates for Covid-19 vaccines, they need to know how their local representative feels about the mass vaccination because if the representative does not fully support the vaccines, then the nurses will lose the support for publicizing the importance of the vaccines. The representative can lobby against it because it is not profitable for them, challenging the nurses to prove their support and decisions. If that becomes the case, nurses can use irrefutable evidence and knowledge more clearly and justifiably to publicize their support for the policy.
The strategies for better advocating are training and education programs for the nurses. Nurses already understand that they are the largest number of healthcare professionals in the healthcare industry, and therefore, their voices and suggestions are essential. Advocating for patients at the bedside is as important as advocating for them at the state or federal
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