Nurses form an important part of the healthcare system of delivery, providing indirectly patients’ care and influencing nursing practice and health policy. Assuming their own seat to judge themselves from firsthand experience patients’ misery based on direct bedside experience of healthcare delivery, they are best suited to offer feed-back to policymakers at expert level. With leadership, professional organizations, and campaigns for policy, they can be of significance to the nursing profession, healthcare, and outcomes for the patient overall.
Learn About Healthcare Policy and Nursing Standards
Health policy is regulation, rule, and law that prescribes the way of delivery of healthcare care. Nursing standards, on the other hand, prescribe ethical practice and quality of care to be used by the nurses. Standardization, safety, and quality of care to patients is achieved by application of the standards. Nurses influence the above through active participation in institutional, state, and national levels of decision-making.
Advocacy and Policy Influence
Nurses are placed in an advantageous position within the struggle for health in that they are in between policy makers and patients. Being bedside, they receive firsthand exposure to reality on the ground of health delivery on the ground and therefore can bargain better patient care as well as workers’ environment for professionals.
- Involvement in Lawmaking Processes
Nurses become involved in legislative hearings by calling their legislatures, attending public hearings, and testifying as an expert in health care legislation. Nurses also utilize nursing organizations to promote policy change that advances patient safety, promotes funding for nursing education, and reverses nursing workforce shortages.
- Involvement in Professional Organizations
They are members of some of these organizations, such as the American Nurses Association (ANA), the International Council of Nurses (ICN), and state boards of nursing. They also have political influence. Organisation members are able to engage in policy development, research, and advocacy for practice change in health care policy and nursing.
Leadership in Healthcare Policy
Nurses are becoming increasingly involved in actively participating in health policy formulation and implementation. Nurses are being appointed as health policymakers, consultants, and administrators to address issues regarding nursing in policy formulation.
· Nurses as Policy Advisors
Others of these nurses even have government political office directly. They serve as policy advisors to non-government centers, hospitals, and government agencies. They use clinical practice to educate legislation on its impact on the availability, affordability, and quality of health care. They bridge it from the bedside to emerging policy and legislation accessible and available by patients and physicians.
- Holding Political Office
Other nurses have entered politics and become members of state, local, and federal legislatures. Elected politician-nurses advocate for patient-centered policy, healthy work environments, and community-oriented healthcare reform.
- Influence on Nursing Expectations
Nurses also set and deliver high nursing standards by training, role modeling, and professional development.
- Education and Training
By sponsoring nurses for further study, nurses create curricula to prepare the professionals of the future with solutions to emerging health issues. They provide evidence-based practice, ethics, and new health technology to be achieved by nursing students.
Mentorship and Professional Development
Professional nursing develops nursing standards by educating new professionals and learning culture and development and ongoing growth. Facilitating ongoing development and learning allows the profession to evolve with changing health needs and changing medical technology innovation.
Healthcare Policy and Nursing Standards Challenges
Although they are influential as stakeholders, nurses tend to lack since they are restrained by the limitation that they cannot influence nursing practice and healthcare policy. Organizational matters, limited time to go through policies, and training deficits in policies may discourage them from mobilization. They need aggregated action to challenge barriers:
- Education and Awareness: Nurses need training on healthcare policy and the legislative process.
- Collaboration: Professional organizations, interprofessional teams, and policymakers are provided with bargaining power.
- Effective Communication: Nurses need to learn effective communication skills so that they can effectively and convincingly articulate their views.
Nurses are the backbone of the health care delivery system, and nurses need to play a critical role in nursing practice standards and policymaking in health care.
Taking positive actions in the areas of advocacy, education, and leadership helps them lead change toward improved patient care, a healthier work environment, and a stronger nursing practice. Nurses must serve in the capacity of policy makers and standard setters as epochs and paradigms shift in the science and art of medicine in order to build a healthier future for everyone involved.
