Four Spheres of Political Action in Nursing

The four spheres of political action in nursing include Workplace, Government, Organization and Community. The political action related to workplace is associated with the issues that affect patient care and nursing jobs. The government action helps to resolve the issues of rules and regulations, laws and managing nursing practice. Organization action is related to the problems that outline the nursing practice and community based political action helps to solve the issues related to community health (Mason et al., 2016).

The four spheres of political actions in nursing are complex system and interconnected. Changes in one sphere may influence the others. Thus, it is possible to make policies based on more than one spheres. For example, a family practice nurse may use the workplace policies to in order to enhance the access to better service. The government strategies such as media and interview may be used to express their views regarding the policies. In addition they may utilize the policies of association or community they belongs to, in order to communicate with the policy makers regarding their view. In this way all of the spheres may be sued by the family practice nurse and interlinked the spheres to access better service (Mason et al., 2016).

Ethical consideration is one of the most important part of nursing practice and also in the health care policies. In this regards the code of ethics was developed to provide guidance so that nurses could carry out their duty with quality and ethical obligations. In case of political action in nursing some ethical consideration regarding the implementation of process and developing the policies, policy analysis and implementing the strategies need to be taken. It would help to implement the policy without any difficulties and ethical issues (American Nurses Association, 2015).

There are different concerns in the healthcare policies however, one of the most vital concerns is associated with reimbursement. In reimbursement policy, government or insurance company pays to the healthcare service providers via the reimbursement system. The healthcare service providers provide medical services to the people with need and file reimbursement through the policy for such services to the government or insurance company. Through the introduction of appropriate policy related to reimbursement the concern may be addressed in an effective manner (Gambardella, 2011).

The healthcare policies impact strongly on the nursing profession as it provides the guidelines for standardization the daily activities of the nursing professionals. The healthcare policies provide clarification during the time of different issues and activities that could affect the legal liabilities, health outcomes, safety and regulatory requirements. It helps to provide adequate resources to the nursing professionals to access adequate service and improve their practice in order to provide quality service to the clients. Thus, it can be said that the healthcare policies play an important role in order to influence the nursing profession (Nault, 2012).

Interconnection of 4 Spheres

The nursing profession plays a vital role in order to influence the healthcare policy. The nursing profession impact strongly in the development and implementation of healthcare policy.  The nursing profession act as the forum of evaluating the effectiveness of the healthcare policy. The profession advocate for the patients and helps to identify the areas of development thus, helps to improve the policies. However, due to lack of knowledge, opportunity and inadequate skill the nurses could not participate appropriately in the decision of healthcare policy. Therefore, sufficient support is needed to encourage the nurses to influence the healthcare policy for more improvement (Nault, 2012).

The health care policy framework that contains unique position of nurses include 8 major components such as-

• Governancefor policy, public health finance, quality, accountability and transparency.
• Protectionfrom disease and climate change.
• Promotion of health equalities, healthy behaviour and literacy.
• Knowledgeregarding monitoring, surveillance, research and innovation.
• Preventionmeasures such as vaccination.
• Selecting target people.
• Advocacyfor profession, client and community.
• Capacityof development (Gambardella, 2011).

1. Political action on the part of nurse’s discussion:

The nursing profession is considered as the largest medical profession across the world, thus the participation of nursing professionals in the political action the organization is one of the major responsibilities. The professional and moral participation of the nurses in the legislation influence the patients as well. The participation of nurses in politics helps to improve the service delivery within the healthcare system because, through involving in the politics the nurses advocate for their clients. Through assuming a position of leader a nurse could participate in the politics in healthcare or they could access formal training and create committees and local office as well. In such way the nurses could involve in the politics in the healthcare and improve the quality of service (Nault, 2012).

Leadership is one of the most important features of any workplace. In nursing it plays a crucial role from managing the service to preparing policies. In this regards there are different leaders that organize the nursing profession in an effective manner. For example, nurse manager, who manage the whole nursing unit. Nurse manger identifies the issues in the nursing management and influence the health policy to develop services to address the issues. Another leader is nurse leader who mainly focuses on improving standards of practice, thus helps to provide ideas regarding the improvement in the services, thus, helps to develop policy accordingly. The human resource manager is another leader that helps to identify the issues in managing the whole organization and influence the policy makers to develop policy to resolve the management issue (McCormack & McCance, 2017). In this way the leaders are associated with the development of health policy.

Ethics is one of the main components of health system and the role of ethics in shaping health policy is also important. The main concerns that arise during the period of developing a health policy are accountability, prevention and social justice. The ethics enhance the strength of the framework of health policies in order to deal with such concerns.  Maintaining ethical consideration regarding development of strategies, policies and implementation process during the development of health policy helps to avoid ethical issues thus make it easy for the professionals and the clients as well to accept the policy and access better service in order maintain health and well-being (American Nurses Association, 2015).

Ethical Consideration

The information technology in the health system is one of the most important systems that help to build fundamental knowledge regarding the health policies in order to formulate policy priority. The information technology in the health system helps to enable the health service providers to gather adequate data and utilize the data in order to inform the clients about the benefits of the policies and communicate within the clinical settings. The information technology in the health system also helps to educate the patients and their families regarding the health policies. Such contribution of information technology enables the nursing professionals and the patients to learn about the health policies and advocate for the policy priority (American Nurses Association, 2015).

Advocacy is defined as the backbone of nursing profession. The role of advocacy indicates responsibilities to advocate for individual such as health professionals and the patients as well. The role of advocacy present in workplace and in the communities also. The advocacy role of individual helps to enhance the quality of service through the access of better service and improve the patient care effectively. Beside nursing advocacy, the political and legislative advocacy play important role in order to facilitating the nursing profession and patient care in an effective manner (American Nurses Association, 2015).

Nurses play an important role in order to advocate for their service and patient care as well. It is the duty of the advance practice nurses to advocate for their own service and for the patients. The nursing ethics provides effective tools and resources to the nurses in order to become successful advocate in the clinical practice. The element known as championing helps the nurses to raise voice for essential improvement in the nursing practice to advance the access of high quality and affordable service in the health care settings. In this regards it is important to advocate with the policy makers directly and empower the nurses to discuss their perspective. Participating in the advocacy in an effective manner would help the advance practice nurses to enhance their profession and reach the higher level (American Nurses Association, 2015).

Advocacy occurs in all advance practice areas such as family nurse practitioners, education, informatics and executive as well. In order to advocate in such field the nursing professionals identify the issues in the fields. Next they most applicable interventions based on current evidences are selected. After that networking is introduced for example, meeting with other health experts and leaders of the organization in order to support the advocacy. Finally, movements are anticipated in order to address the issues and achieve expected health outcomes (American Nurses Association, 2015). 

References:

American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Silver Spring, MD: Nursebooks, Inc.

Gambardella, L.C. (2011). Nursing and politics: Strange bedfellows or compatible partners in practice? Building a passion for political action. Nursing News, 35(2), 13.

Mason, D. J., Gardner, D. B., Outlaw, F. H., & O’Grady, E. T. (Eds). (2016). Policy & politics in nursing and healthcare (7th ed.). Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com 

McCormack, B. & McCance, T. (2017). Person-centered practice in nursing and health care: Theory and practice (2^nd ed.). Chichester: West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Nault, D.S. (2012). Nurses and public policy. The Michigan Nurse, 85(1), 13-20.