Political Competence and Its Significance for Nurses Discussion Reply – Description
reply to Cassidy :
Han and Kim (2020) list political competence in four categories, knowledge, efficacy, interaction, and activity. To me, this means that to be politically competent, a nurse needs to have knowledge of politics and be active in politics. As a nurse learns more and understands what it is to be a nurse leader and what kind of laws are being passed by legislators, they can take steps to inform policymakers about how those laws will affect patients and their providers. Often there are politicians attempting to pass health laws without the valuable insights from key healthcare team members.
A recent example of this type of political competence is in my home state of Utah. In just March of this year, Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill that changed the language in laws regarding nursing practitioners (Hinton, 2023). This language made it so Utah went from a yellow practice state to a green practice state. Utah used to require collaboration with another provider for new NP to prescribe schedule II medications. However, with this new change, NPs in Utah are no longer required to have these agreements. These changes were organized by the Utah Nurse Practitioners Association and were finally made after multiple APRNs met with legislators.
This is an excellent example of nurses that took their knowledge and applied it to laws that were impeding the full practice authority of APRNs in the state. They effectively applied their knowledge, invited others to do so with them, and ultimately changes the policies in the state of Utah to better provide care for those in need.
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