Unit 8 Discussion : Health Policies Essay

Posted: November 28th, 2022

Unit 8 Discussion : Health Policies Essay

The influence of nurses on health policies plays an important role in promoting patient safety, improving the quality of care, and easing access to the essential resources and promoting the quality of healthcare (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Nurses identify healthcare problems that may require intervention from the government and other policy-makers because they work in areas that they provide indirect or direct patient care (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Nurses seek and retrieve evidence through inquiry and researching to identify suitable interventions. Nurses can establish contact with leaders, agency directors, and legislators through continuing relationships leaders and officials and their staff. By developing credibility with individuals actively involved in the political process and being moral and ethical advocates for patients; this makes nurses important players during the procedure of policy-making (Arabi et al., 2014).    Unit 8 Discussion : Health Policies Essay

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The methods a nurse can use to stay current with health policy knowledge include subscribing to and reading professional journals. Some professional journals with the current knowledge on policy issues include the American Journal of Critical Care; American Association of Critical-Care Nurses; American Nurse Today; Journal for Nurse Practitioners; Journal of Pediatric Health Care; Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing, among others. Additionally, a nurse can use organizations to stay updated with current health policy knowledge. For example, the American Academy of Nursing provides policy briefs and proposals to combat developing infectious diseases and can be accessed through http://www.aannet.org/policy-advocacy/emerging-and-infectious-diseases. American Nurses Association (ANA) also provides information on infections, emerging diseases, and policy issues about the nursing profession. Organizations like the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also provide information on current health issues.

The current and emerging health policy issues in the US include patient safety and the cost of health care. Additionally, data collection and reporting allied to nursing practice is also an important health policy issue. This will facilitate the effective collection of data and implementation of reliable reporting systems and thus enable nurses to have reliable measures of quality of care. Another vital policy issue is workforce development (Tracy & O’Grady, 2019). The current shortage of care providers in primary care settings indicates the significance of APNs. Therefore, a workforce policy supporting employment of APNs as per their scope of practice is necessary. Unit 8 Discussion : Health Policies Essay

APNs who are politically competent are expert sources of information during the policy-making process. Therefore, apart from health, nurses should be widely informed about broad issues such as tax, agriculture, transportation, education, among other issues to be able to provide helpful proposals and evidence-based information to inform policies affecting the public (Tracy & O’Grady, 2019). The nurse should also be knowledgeable about the policy-making process and have the ability to garner public support and influence public opinion. For example, an APN can identify a pressing issue within the society and use the media to inform the public and the policy-makers about the issue, using the individual APN’s expertise (Tracy & O’Grady, 2019). With such an action, the nurse gains support from the public and policy-makers as well. APNs can also serve in organizations they can be policy-makers such as health research agencies and health advisory boards.

References

Arabi, A., Rafii, F., Cheraghi, M. A., & Ghiyasvandian, S. (2014). Nurses’ policy influence: A concept analysis. Iranian journal of nursing and midwifery research, 19(3), 315–322.

Salmond, S. W., & Echevarria, M. (2017). Healthcare Transformation and Changing Roles for Nursing. Orthopedic nursing, 36(1), 12–25. https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000308.

Tracy, M. F., & O’Grady, E. T. (2019). Hamric and Hanson’ s Advanced Nursing Practice: An integrative approach (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

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Unit 8 Discussion : Health Policies Essay