Health Medical Homework Help

I need an answer to the text posted below. 100 words, APA format, 2 references.

Advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) and registered nurses (RN) should participate in policy review and evaluation, and there are numerous opportunities to do so. Milstead and Short state, “APRNs are not strangers to evaluation. They have long used evaluation in multiple clinical and healthcare settings, including the evaluation of a patient’s response to a nursing intervention, use of outcome-based clinical evaluations, or a self-evaluation for promotion, and so the transition to using these skills to evaluate a program is a natural evolution of nursing practice (2018, pp. 191).

One opportunity for APRNs and RNs to participate in policy review is through membership with a professional nursing organization, such as the American Nurses Association (ANA). The ANA aims to safeguard “the needs of health care consumers and nurses; advocating that nursing expertise plays a vital role in developing policy initiatives (American Nurses Association, 2020). The ANA provides a vast network of professional nurses that provides a great platform for policy review. This organization provides strength in numbers and is able to consolidate nurse’s opinions and concerns into policy, as well as policy review. Just as policies need to be developed to solve health care issues, they also need to be evaluated to ensure they are serving their designed purpose. A challenge that may be presented with using a professional organization for policy review is how vast the organization is and it may be overwhelming to some nurses, as well as losing some autonomy and involvement in the project. To mitigate this, nurses could utilize the organization to network smaller groups of nurses who share similar opinions and are like-minded about a certain policy to review it as a smaller team.

Another opportunity for RNs and APRNs to get involved is through social media. According to the study which evaluated the impact of nurses’ policy discussion on Twitter, social media “can help reach and engage nurses in policy discussion and ensure there is better continuity between policy and practice” (O’Conner, 2017). Social media allows nurses to stay current on policies and provides an avenue to discuss them with other nurses. A challenge with social media is that the demographic of older nurses sometimes gets excluded, as they do not utilize social media. To overcome this, training can be provided to older nurses and professional organizations can provide these pages on their websites homepage for easier access.

Two strategies that might help to better advocate and communicate the existence of these opportunities include promoting exposure at the workplace and incentivizing policy involvement. In the workplace, nurse educators can provide education to nursing staff regarding ways to participate in policy review, as well as the many benefits of joining a professional nursing organization. Nurse executives and leadership could provide incentives for policy review and involvement as well, including bonuses, awards, and necessary for promotion to a certain level.

References

American Nurses Association (ANA). (2020). About ANA: ANA Enterprise. Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://www.nursingworld.org/ana/about-ana/

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2018). Health policy and politics: A nurse’s guide (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

O’Connor, S. (2017). Using social media to engage nurses in health policy development. Retrieved April 25, 2021, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28736934/