Article Summary: Advanced Practice Nurses (APN) And Policy

The nurses in the advanced practice category are required to have skills and knowledge for negotiation, communication, resolution, and change among other in the policy arena. This is because the advanced practice nurses are critical in the policy design, implementation, and evaluation processes. Hence, the advanced practice nurses (APN) have a duty to ensure current and future generations in the USA can access quality and affordable health care, which is achieved through the collaborative process with political entities. The APN should realize that the policy process is broader and comprehensive than the political process, hence the need to understand the process and cooperate patiently with legislators to provide a better system of healthcare (Milstead, 2013).

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Unfortunately, the lawmakers have limited knowledge about the critical healthcare issues and hence need the APN to inform them to make desirable policies. Thus, to achieve this goal, the nurses have a group interacting with senators, Senate Nursing Caucus, which educates these legislators on various healthcare activities and needs to guide them in decision making and listen to the concerns from senators while making the legislation. Moreover, the USA house of representatives has the Congressional Nursing Caucus which inform the legislators on healthcare matters. In the two Caucus teams, the member holds briefings on various healthcare issues such as preparedness in bioterrorism, patient safety, and a shortage of nurses among other. In the process, the nurses are expected to be assertive while delivering their concerns to the policymakers for consideration. Moreover, the APN has a role of sharing the success stories with the legislators to motivate them in the policy-making activities. For this reason, many APN has developed contact with political heads, their staff, and other appointed officials to ensure their issues are heard in current and future parliament (Milstead, 2013).

The bachelorette studies introduce the nursing students into the policymaking process to enlighten them on their political role of improving the delivery of healthcare outside the health facilities. The APN has realized that the comprehensive integration of the policy processes, occurs when the APNs and other care providers discern the health care needs and its social implications and promptly inform the public officials by presenting reliable data that can be understood and guide in decision making. Additionally, the nurses should consider their role in the evaluation of a policy to establish whether the legislation has led to the desired outcome. Moreover, the understanding that policy making is not a linear process but rather fluid nature, among and within phases, can help the APN to be patients in the process. For instance, in the USA, the policy-making process involves the agenda setting, response from the government, policy design, implementation, and evaluation. The APN understands their roles in these process both at the parliament and healthcare facilities to generate required data to drive the desired policy (Milstead, 2013).

Conclusion

Hence, the APN participation ensures that the policymakers design a policy that will improve the outcomes of health issues, by taking part in the implementation and evaluation process. Without proper analysis of the issues prompting policymaking, the process may lead to undesirable results which will be a failure by the APN. Hence, before bills are set for the legislators for a debate, a thorough research is needed to obtain evidence-based data to guide through all stage of decision making (Arabi, Rafii, Cheraghi, & Ghiyasvandian, 2014).

References

Milstead, J. A. (2013). Advanced practice nurses and public policy, naturally. Health policy and politics: A nurse's guide, 1-27. Retrieved from http://samples.jbpub.com/9781449665098/97768_ch01_milstead.pdf

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.