Influencing Health Policy
Thank you!!! Please follow outline keep in mind I work in the emergency room and live in Tennessee.**** Bold each point below in the paper Nurses can play a pivotal role in spearheading and influencing health care policy. Karen Daley's personal story, presented in this week's media program, is a poignant example of this. In addition, special interest groups and professional nursing organizations support nurses at the local, state, national, and international levels to improve health care delivery through influencing health care policy. To prepare for this Discussion, reflect on your readings and the video presentation from this week’s resources. Then address the following: •Identify a health policy problem in your local community or state. •How could nurses use policy and politics to address the problem? •Review the Learning Resources and note successful strategies used by nurses or nurse associations to influence policy making. What strategies could support you in championing this issue? Support your ideas or those of others with references from the professional nursing literature. •
definition of politics in Mason, Leavitt, and Chaffee (2014, p. 5),
Politics is frequently associated with a negative connotation, yet it is a actually neutral term. Politics is the process of influencing the allocation of scarce resources. Policymaking involves the distribution of resources; so politics or political action can be viewed as the efforts and strategies used to shape a policy choice. The definition of politics contains several important concepts. Influencing indicates that there are opportunities to shape the outcomes of a process. Allocation means that decisions are being made about how to distribute resources. Scarce implies that there are limits to the amount of resources available- and that all parties likely cannot have all they want. Finally, resources are usually considered to be financial, but could also include human resources (personnel), time, or physical space such as offices (Mason,Leavitt,& Chaffee,2007). Politics can also be considered to be how conflicts in a society are expressed and resolved in favor of one det of values or interest over another (Kraft&Furlong,2010)
Political skills have a bad reputation; for some it conjures up thoughts of manipulatio ,self-interested behavior, and favoritism (Ferris, Davidson,& Perrewe, 2005). “she plays politics” is not generally considered to be a compliment, but true political skill is critical in health care leadership, advocating for others ,and shaping policy. Ferris et al. (1005) consider political skill to be the ability to understand others and to use that knowledge to influence others to act in a way that supports one’s objective. They believe political skill has four components:
- Social astuteness: Skill at being attuned to others and social situation
- Interpersonal influence: Convincing personal style that influences others featuring the ability to adapt behavior to situations and be pleasant and productive to work with.
- Networking ability: The ability to develop and use diverse networks of people and the ability to position oneself to create and take advantage of opportunities.
- Apparent sincerity: The display of high levels of integrity, authenticity, sincerity, and genuineness.
Influencing Health Policy
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Influencing Health Policy
Identify a health care problem
The introduction of a universal health care program has created a significant health policy problem. This is because there are differences over how it should be implemented. Moreover, there is a significant constituency in the state which opposes the introduction of the program. These differences have created a confusion within the medical profession. In addition, the program itself has notable shortcomings that must be addressed before it is rolled out.
How nurses can use policy and politics to address the problem
According to Mason and Chafee (2014), politics influences the formulation of policy and the allocation of resources. The nurses can use politics to ensure that legislators allocate enough resources for dealing with this policy problem. This is because they form a constituency which the politicians would benefit from having its support. Th...