Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals

Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals

Read the case studies in Chapter 3 of Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals. Examine what Margaret Sanger, The Arkansas State Legislature, and others have done to make changes to health care policy. Outline the process that these pioneers took to effect change. Describe how policy change moves from internal adoption to legislation. Discuss expertise and internal and external advocacy. Give an example of a policy change you would advocate for.

Discussion Board:  Minimum 200 words, APA Style, Time New Roman, Font 12,   (3 references- in text citations) not older than (2012-2017).   No Plagiarism please.

Health systems are rapidly developing and changing. Nurses, as a part of this system, should move forward along with these changes.[1] For this purpose, nurses need to influence the formulation of health policies rather than just implementation of them. Then, they need to be active in the development of health policies to be better able to control their practice.[2] In this process, nurse leaders have a very important role. They need to acquire policy-making skills in order to address professional challenges.[3] Because of their values, professional ethics, advocacy skills, and experiences, nurse leaders have unique and valuable views toward health policies.[2] There has been increasing growth toward nurses’ presence, role, and influence in health policies during recent decades. Nurses are expected to identify the issues deliberately and work with other decision makers to advance health care policies. They should understand the levels of power, and know who controls the resources of health services in their organizations.[4] Therefore, we can go ahead and say that nurses have to be involved in policies which affect patients, families, themselves, and the whole health care system.[5]

Nurses’ influence in health polices protects patient safety, increases quality of care, and facilitates their access to the required

resources and promotes quality health care.[4,6] Accordingly, the concept of policy influence in nursing is a new and important concept, but there is lack of conceptual clarity with regard to what this concept really represents. Dowswell et al. (2002) in their study showed that most primary care groups in primary care centers consulted with local nurses about the key fields in care services and they believed that consultation with nurses had been effective.[2] On the other hand, results of a survey about the health managers’ and authorities’ perceptions of the effect of various health professions on revision of health affairs reveal that nurses are in the sixth (the last) grade with a dominant point interval in comparison to other health professionals.[7]

There is an ambiguous point here whether or not what Dowswell et al. (2002) reported as consultation with nurses in local fields really represents nurses’ policy influence. It seems that the extent of applying this concept is wide and not clearly addressed in literatures. On the other hand, we should state that health systems’ policies settle within three levels: Micro, macro, and meso. In the micro level, policies are just for especial parts, fields, or groups, and have not been made essentially by the government, whereas in the macro level, policies are for the whole country and have been made essentially by the government.[8] The meso level policies settle between micro and macro levels and have usually been made by official organizations.[9] Now can we call what happens in all these three levels as policy influence? So, clarifying and defining this concept in order to develop it, especially in different levels of nursing management is essential. By clarifying this concept, we can reach a common language and help to increase the credibility of future studies