Respond to at least two of your colleagues* posts by suggesting additional opportunities or recommendations for overcoming the challenges described by your colleagues.
Policy making is critical in every area to get society’s desired changes. Hajizadeh et al. (2021) stated, “According to the definition by World Health Organization (WHO), health policies refer to decisions, plans, and actions undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society.” (p.2). Nursing is considered the most prominent medical organization. As such, they greatly influence policymaking or policy changes at local, state, and federal levels (Duquesne University School of Nursing. 2020, May 23).
The opportunities to be an RN OR APRN are primarily providing effective and efficient patient care to many people, patient education, patient advocacy, medication, and treatment administration, collaborating with other healthcare providers, and many more. However, challenges abound in discharging these roles and opportunities. Bureaucracy is one of the challenges deterring RN/APRNs from discharging their duties. Sometimes patient advocacy would extend more than the health care setting to the government level.
Policy making and changes, when implemented, ensure patient safety. The primary goal of health policies is to promote the public’s welfare. It involves three stages formulation, policy implementation, and evaluation (Hajizadeh et al., 2021). Nurses should be involved in politics to bring about healthcare changes. Nurses have firsthand experience of how the policy impacts the patient in the long run. Hence, the nurses are in the best position to advocate for policymaking/ changes for the patient at the local, state, and federal levels (Milstead & Short, 2019).
Nurses’ involvement in professional nursing associations could help curb the challenges encountered in care delivery. An association like the American nursing association (ANA) and the American association of nurse practitioners (AANP) are good examples. These associations stand as a formidable force to defend a policy in favor of healthcare. Their wealth of experience is brought to bear in terms of experience in formulating and implementing health policies that cater to the patient’s needs. Policies, as they relate to mental and physical health care accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic status, age, sex, race, and gender, are one a nurse should always advocate for.
Class response 2
Nurses have been involved in many changes not only in their workplace, but nurses have the opportunity to influence their legislators also in laws that they see fit. In 2018 a bill was passed S.2446 Safe Staffing for Nurse and Patient Safety Act of 2018 and then reintroduced as S.1168 again after the COVID pandemic, it simply stated that nurses should have a certain number of patients in order to have less burnout and better patient outcomes. It states that there is a correlation in medication errors, poor patient outcomes and increase in nurse turnover which in 2015 cost the average hospital $5 million dollars every year. Nurses were involved in this billed since it meant better staffing ratio to work, the New York State Nurse Association was extremely involved in getting this bill enacted like frontline nurses like Karines Reyes. (Nysna,n.d).
How Could Nurses get involved
RNs and APRNs have many opportunities to get involved and actively be involved in policy making, no longer do nurses just take a backseat they understand that policies and bills will influence their workplace and their lives in general. They are internship programs with elected officials and bureaucratic agencies, which teach these nurses how to write legislation, how to bring arguments forth, and also how to bring points of interest that pertains to the general public. Another way that Nurses and APRNs could be involved in the political arena is thru organizations like the House of Nursing Caucus has the responsibility of educating legislators about the issues that affect nurses and how nurses affect the health of the public.
Challenges
The challenges that policy making are many but the number one will be how to really get legislators to actually listen to your proposal. The first thing I will do is to reach out to my local legislators in order to at least get them to understand the policy that I would like to implement and why, I will then reach out and get petitions signed for the policy that I would like to implement and get endorsements from the general public since this will affect them.
Getting the policy reviewed by my local Credentialling review program will also be one of the things that will have to be done in order to first present a policy, then take it to the CT Department of Health to also review the policy, some of these agencies will inform state senators of the policy and when they are voting on legislations. The challenge will be if they even listen to the policy and think it is significant enough to make into a bill.