Professional Nurse’s Role in Health Policy
In an increasingly changing healthcare industry, nurses represent a major group of the workforce providing primary and specialized care to millions of people. In the performance of their duties, nurses are affected by among other things, the policies that have been adopted by local, state, and federal governments. Individual hospitals also have policies and procedures that nurses are expected to comply with. As the largest workforce, nurses are uniquely positioned to influence how policies affect the patients and communities that they serve. Nurses and professional nurse groups can advocate for comprehensive changes whether in the organizations that they work for, government agencies, or any other government and non-government body. Thus, because healthcare facilities and by extension the healthcare industry operates under the context of healthcare policies, nurses, as the largest workforce in the industry can influence these policies for the benefit of the patients and communities that they serve.
A healthcare policy is a plan, action, or action that is enacted and implemented with a specific intent to achieve particular healthcare goals. Generally, healthcare policies encompass any law, regulation, and research that have a direct bearing on their work and by extension impact the care provided to patients. By involving themselves in healthcare policymaking, nurses can influence patient care now and, in the future, (Turale & Kunaviktikul, 2019). The most obvious way that nurses use to influence healthcare policies is by joining nurse associations that give them a collective voice. Multiple nurse associations bring together professionals with specific skills such as knowledge of what could work and what cannot work in terms of healthcare policies. Like other interest groups, nurse organizations often get involved in lobbying lawmakers to shape healthcare policy. These nurse organizations are often drawn from states across the US and aim to positively influence healthcare policies to ensure that patients and the community they serve are optimally served in a conducive environment.
Only a small percentage of nurses choose a career in nursing policy. However, a majority of them can change or influence nursing policies, especially in the fields that they specialize. In particular, nurses can advocate for the allocation of additional financial resources, the addition of more support personnel, and the achievement of individual patient equity. Some of the areas where nurses can influence policy decisions include individual health, population health, and staff health. Nurses have a moral duty to respond to barriers that prevent people from accessing the best care available (Turale & Kunaviktikul, 2019). These barriers cause unequal access to healthcare for groups based on race, social status, and other social constructs. Because of their complexity, nurses take a comprehensive look into them by evaluating political, social, and economic factors that could act as barriers to access and advocating for their removal. Thus, as part of their responsibility to the patient and communities they serve, nurses advocate for equal access to healthcare by targeting barriers that hinder equal access.
Nurses also advocate for the health of the population they serve and the health of the healthcare professionals that they work with. Nurse professional organizations recommend that nurses advocate for the health of the population they serve in some capacity to address the healthcare needs of individuals, groups, communities, and families (Turale & Kunaviktikul, 2019). In this regard, nurses can advocate the allocation of additional resources, the availability, and affordability of basic provisions, and healthcare education for the whole community. In addition, nurses in their professional leadership roles use their positions to ensure and advocate for a conducive working environment where they can offer optimal care to patients. In addition, they advocate for a safe working environment where the personal wellness of individual nurse professionals is considered and improved through targeted strategies aimed at offering nurse professionals the best working environment. This care for other professional nurses is multifaceted, comprehensive, and could extend beyond a healthcare facility. Thus, nurse professionals can also advocate for staff and population health.
However, despite the best effort to positively impact population, individual, and staff health, rapid changes in healthcare, financial, environmental, and technological environments means that their advocacy and thus influence is limited. Nurses work closely with patients and their families in multiple settings, they also understand the impact of different policies on the health of the people they serve. However, despite these factors, their advocacy is limited by political, social, financial, and technological factors (Hajizadeh et al., 2021). The limits on how nurses influence policy is because most nurses are not involved in the development of some of the significant policy changes. Instead, nurses are almost always involved in the implementation of policies. The limited involvement of nurses in policymaking can be attributed to several factors such as limited skills, and lack of adequate resources. However, these barriers can be overcome and lead to the active and significant participation of nurse professionals in policymaking on the individual, population, and staff health.
Action Plan for Nurses to Increase Involvement
Despite the best efforts of nurse and nurse professional organizations to ensure that advocacy, produces optimal results for nurse professionals, their patients, and the communities they serve, their influence is limited. Some of the reasons why their influence on health policy is limited include limited knowledge of policymaking, insufficiently powerful nurse organizations, and insufficient resources. Thus, a roadmap to increase the involvement of nurses in healthcare policy requires the overcoming of these barriers. As such, nurses should embrace a career in health policy. Only a small percentage of professional nurses choose a career in health policy (Hajizadeh et al., 2021). The preference for working in a healthcare setting rather than in policymaking circles limits the amount of knowledge that nurses and nurse professional organizations have in policymaking. Consequently, this limits their influence on healthcare policy because the people entrusted to draft health policies may not have first-hand knowledge and experience dealing with the patient directly. Thus, to increase their involvement, nurse professional organizations should recommend more nurses to pursue a career in health and healthcare policy.
Inadequately powerful nurse organizations and a lack of sufficient resources to influence policy are other barriers that should be broken to increase involvement. Currently, each state has its own nurse professional organizations for professionals in specific fields. Despite being numerous, there is little interstate coordination between these organizations which limits their influence at the federal level. Thus, for nurse professional organizations to increase their involvement at the federal level, they need interstate coordination of the formation of an all-powerful national organization that encompasses all the other state nurse professional organizations (Hajizadeh et al., 2021). Such a move would see the creation of a behemoth with enough resources and membership and capable of seriously influencing policy at all levels of government. Thus, the creation of a nurse professional organization that includes professional organizations at the state level would increase the influence and involvement of nurses in local, state, and federal health and healthcare policy formulation.
References
Hajizadeh, A., Zamanzadeh, V., Kakemam, E., Bahreini, R., & Khodayari-Zarnaq, R. (2021). Factors influencing nurses’ participation in the health policy-making process: A systematic review. BMC Nursing, 20(1). Web.
Turale, S., & Kunaviktikul, W. (2019). The contribution of nurses to health policy and advocacy requires leaders to provide training and mentorship. International Nursing Review, 66(3), 302–304. Web.