Description
Health care policy affect each and every nurse’s daily practice but there seems to be barriers that alters nurses’ participation in development of health care policy in the United States. According to a study, it indicated the most common barriers include sources limitations, insufficient time, political knowledge, heavier workloads, and fears that encounter with others’ beliefs that negatively affect involvement in policy making (Haijzadeh et al., 2021).The biggest barrier that altered nurses’ participation would be insufficient knowledge and skills on health policy making and guidelines. Nurses lacking the specific knowledge, education, or training will contribute to them feeling inadequate to participate in these efforts. Following up would be lack of resources as well as lack of support. Lack of resources therefore contributes to a nurse’s lack of knowledge on how to develop health care policies. Lack of support and recognition is a barrier that influences nurses contribution making them feel undervalued and doesn’t help with a positive work environment. Sometimes nurses have a hard time gaining support or adequate representation in policymaking due to other higher roles or healthcare professionals. This creates a disruption with nurses’ ability to advocate for certain health care policies. Nurses work schedules are very demanding with heavy workloads which leads to them having insufficient time to engage in new health care policy development or attend meetings pertaining to health care policy.By understanding these different barriers can hopefully engage more nurses and aid in their participation in health care policy making in the future. These barriers can be overcame by providing more education, skills or resources available to nurses so they can have a more active role and develop new health care policies.ReferencesHajizadeh A, Zamanzadeh V, Kakemam E, Bahreini R, Khodayari-Zarnaq R. Factors influencing nurses participation in the health policy-making process: a systematic review. BMC Nurs. 2021 Jul 12;20(1):128. doi: 10.1186/s12912-021-00648-6. PMID: 34253210; PMCID: PMC8273557.
