Week 1 Nurses Making Policy from Bedside to Boardroom Response – Description
Healthcare is often referred to as being political. There is a need for those who lead change to implement change and to be able to address organizational changes to better healthcare as a whole. According to Waring et al. (2022), there is an increasingly important idea that those who initiate change in healthcare need to possess the knowledge and skills of political skills since initiating change in healthcare can be met with resistance and pushback from some healthcare professionals. They liken healthcare organizations to political arenas since there are various competing interests. Political competence is the ability to effectively navigate the political landscape and make informed decisions about political issues (Waring et al., 2022).
A nurse leader could demonstrate political competence at any level by advocating for nursing policies that improve patient outcomes and access to care and ultimately leads to overall healthcare reform. Being politically active is often misconstrued as being affiliated with disingenuous elected officials and political campaigns (Patton et al., 2023). Per Montalvo and Byrne (2016), possessing political skill means having the ability to understand and influence changes that enhance someone’s or an organization’s objective and is a very important skill for nurses to possess to effectively and efficiently initiate changes in their organization and to help them advance in their personal careers. One way that nurses can become active in state and federal issues is they can write their legislators. This is something that came to fruition recently in the state of Utah. Utah was formally a reduced practice state for nurse practitioners but recently as of 2021 the House Bill 287 was passed, which effectively established nurse practitioners fully practice authority (EPN Network, n.d.). This was due to the countless legislative meetings where nurses and nurse practitioners and many other healthcare professionals came together as well as the number of letters received from nursing professionals who were all demonstrating their political competence to initiate change.
References
EPN Network. (n.d.). NP practice in Utah-legal responsibilities. Utah Nurse Practitioners. Retrieved January 12, 2023, from https://utahnp.enpnetwork.com/page/32731-np-practice-in-utah-legal-responsibilities#:~:text=While%20most%20nurse%20practitioners%20in,for%20the%20care%20they%20provide.
Montalvo, W., Byrne, M.W. (2016). Mentoring nurses in political skill to navigate organizational politics. Nursing Research and Practice, 2016(1), http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/3975634
Patton, R. M., Zalon, M. L., & Ludwick, R. (2023). Nurses making policy: From bedside to boardroom (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.
Waring, J., Bishop, S., Black, G., Clarke, J.M., Exworthy, M., Fulop, N.J., Hartley, J., Ramsay, A., Roe, B. (2022). Understanding the political skills and behaviours for leading the implementation of health services change: a qualitative interview study. International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 11(11), 2686-2697. https://doi.org/10.34172/ijhpm.2022.6564
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