Nurses have a critical role to play in the development and adoption of health policies. The nurses are significantly engaged in policy-making as champions for the public health system and use different strategies. The evidence-based approach in nursing entails the practice of offering nursing care that applies the most current research available to enhance the health, safety, and well-being of patients. It centers on delivering high-quality patient care whereas minimizing variations in patient outcomes and healthcare costs. Nurses may share evidence through team meetings, brochures, social media, or workshops. Active dissemination is most effective because it involves creating a diligent effort to share information with other healthcare providers or patients as compared to passive dissemination. The essay examines the strategies staff nurses use to share evidence that could influence health policy decisions.
Nurses have to nurture an inquisitive spirit entrenched in evidence-based practice culture and environment to collect and share evidence to guide health policy decisions. They need to establish a continuous clinical processes inquiry and frequently inquire about the advanced clinical practices, for example, the application of urinary catheters with often replacement and monitoring to guarantee patients utilizing them are protected from infections related to persistent utilization of the catheters. In nursing, policy and politics center on groups’ deciding their success strategies and leveraging teams to work together with others. These techniques are essential for nurses to keep their lamp lit. When providing care to clients or patients, nurses need to establish clinical practice inquiry and learn and share about the current methods, comprising COVID-19 measurements on daily basis. Therefore, political conflicts need not influence how they respond to the pandemic (McCamey & Sederstrom, 2022. The nurses need to utilize the time to share evidence that can enhance their social, patients, and themselves to be healthy and safe through social media, brochures, pamphlets, and team meetings.
Furthermore, nurses might share evidence-based practices through nursing organizations such as the International Council of Nursing, ANA, and the National League for Nursing. They could offer evidence to the organizations that in many cases involved in policymaking following data collection on different health issues in society through local primary care teams (Rigby, 2018). In addition, nurses can join and participate in non-nursing groups, which are identified for taking political decisions and are considered whenever nursing issues surface in the health sector. These teams represent the views of nurses, who are primary caregivers and take more time at the bedside with patients than somebody else in healthcare delivery services (Milstead & Short, 2017). Nursing advocacy seminars and workshops could are provided by these teams through their legislation offices to enhance the advocacy and influence of nurses in the health sector.
Moreover, nurses might run campaigns to spread information or offer insight into the needs and requirements of the healthcare system in the country. Campaigns have been illustrated to be one of the most successful strategies to share evidence. Attending healthcare rallies might be beneficial as they offer a forum for sharing evidence and an opportunity for collecting evidence-based practices on healthcare matters (Nies & McEwen, 2022). In addition, it permits nurses to share their experiences both personal and professional as healthcare providers, which many policymakers prefer as it assists to highlight a given issue in the health sector.
Healthcare systems have to incorporate the best evidence with patients’ values, preferences, and clinical professionalism when formulating nursing practice decisions or changes. Hence, sharing the outcome of evidence-based practices to inform resolution-making during healthcare policy reviews and development is purposed at enhancing the healthcare of patients and improving the theoretical knowledge and skills of the nurses. It makes approaches such as rallies, team meetings, workshops, and campaigns to be effective in sharing or conveying evidence that influences policymaking in the health sector.
References
McCamey, D., & Sederstrom, N. (2022). Lingering and glaring health disparities amidst COVID-19. Nurses and COVID-19: Ethical Considerations in Pandemic Care, 3(2), 77-86.
Milstead, & Short, N. M. (2017). Health policy and politics (7th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Nies, M. A., & McEwen, M. (2022). Community/Public health nursing – E-book: Promoting the health of populations (7th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.
Rigby, M. (2018). Information as the patient’s advocate. Vision and Value in Health Information, 9(2), 57-68.