Introduction
Most healthcare professionals in charge of delivering high-quality care are nurses. Ensuring that illnesses are identified, treated, and avoided can address the community’s most pressing health challenges. Since they are the most knowledgeable about the most pressing health needs in the community, they are the finest change agents and have the right to participate in deciding how to solve health challenges. Ironically, they have historically had a limited influence over healthcare management and policies.
Healthcare policy: A Nursing Perspective
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health policies as plans, judgments, and actions implemented in society to accomplish specific health care objectives. Nurses have distinct opinions on health issues because of their professional ethics, experience working in the health area, advocacy abilities, and values. Through political knowledge and cooperation with other healthcare professionals, they can impact decisions that will enhance the community’s health. Since multilateralism is crucial to the success of this process, it is troubling and downright paradoxical that the people who make up the majority of the employees play such a small part in the formulation of the very policies that have a significant impact on them.
One reason for this paradox is a lack of understanding of health systems and policy studies. As a result, people become psychologically reluctant to participate in the processes. Similarly, nurses must participate in the implementation, be fully aware, develop perception, and actively engage in the process. Their participation may suffer from nursing leaders’ lack of mentoring. According to research by Shariff and Potgiete, obstacles to nursing leaders’ participation include a lack of involvement, a lack of knowledge and abilities, a poor perception of nursing, a lack of dynamic frameworks, and a lack of necessary resources.
Burke (2016) asserts that nurses can shape policy politics at all governmental levels. They can communicate with those who influence legislation at the local level and join professional nursing organizations to push for policy development and reform at the state level. However, given their ability to affect resource allocation and service delivery, nurses must see themselves as professionals and acknowledge their power.
Impact of Healthcare Policy on Nursing
Healthcare policy aspires to convey to healthcare professionals the results they’re aiming for. It specifies duties and expectations for various groups, including physicians, nurses, and administrators, and aids in the clarification of priorities. Additionally, it facilitates the development of agreement among the various stakeholders in a community or healthcare system. Three key issues—healthcare cost and coverage, health information technology, and health quality and safety concerns—can be distilled into the current sociopolitical and economic healthcare policy.
Healthcare coverage and cost concerns include the expense of receiving healthcare and the cost of providing it. In this case, policies seek to expand health insurance and enhance how insurance is paid for, as well as the services that insurance programs should cover. To ensure patient safety and high-quality care, policy adjustments in health information technology are being made to the procedures for approving and regulating novel digital therapies and healthcare technologies. The topic of quality and safety of care is crucial because it facilitates the shift to patient-centered, value-based care. El-Jardali & Fadlallah (2017) assert that strengthening health delivery systems and patient safety procedures enhances the healthcare industry’s efficiency and effectiveness. In this situation, different organizational levels of health departments are concerned with defining duties to guarantee that various stakeholders promote patient quality and safety throughout the health system.
Conceptualization of Power
A common definition of power makes it possible for an individual or a group to accomplish objectives. A nurse in the twenty-first century is expected to be strategic, knowledgeable about human resources, adept at managing risks, a high-caliber specialist, and comprehend the complexity of clinical fields. For many nurses, the concept of nursing power and how it is acquired and manifests is vague. The nursing literature defines power as the capacity to take action, exert influence, exercise autonomy or control, and make effective use of resources. This is consistent with Talcott Parsons’ definition of power, which holds that it derives from a social system’s capacity to coordinate human activity and resources to achieve a goal rather than through social dominance and coercion. His general thesis about the nature of society informed his perspective on power. The extent to which communal objectives are attained serves as a barometer for power. Therefore, power is more prevalent in society the more effectively a social structure accomplishes the objective set by its members. Therefore, conceptualized power as using knowledge to promote efficiency and autonomy is paramount. In this regard, making policies is essential for nurse leaders to manage operational challenges. They need to be aware of the many tiers of authority and who is in charge of the health services resources in their organizations.
Defining concepts: Theoretical Aspects of Power, Neo-institutional approach, and governmentality
The functionalist theory is one such theory that attempts to conceptualize power. The central concept of functionalism, which assumes the shape of the pluralist theory, is the distribution of power. According to the pluralist concept, power is shared among numerous groups. These organizations may consist of lobbyists, unions, professional associations, and coalitions of like-minded individuals. There are outsider groups and more powerful insider groups inside the pluralist approach. Because of their reputation in the community, insider groups are well-established and can collaborate closely with the elected leaders in government. They focus their attention on problems that have a direct impact on commercial interests. Labor organizations that support legislation that benefits workers in general and union members in particular, for instance, are compatible with the nursing profession’s influence on health policy.
The neo-institutional theory and the idea of institutional reform are under the same umbrella of ideas. There appear to be at least two common issues in any institutional analysis: how to comprehend the connection between institutions and actor behavior and explain the process involved in institutions’ origin and change. The individual actor in the policy process is essential to rational choice researchers. Still, institutions are equally crucial because they give individuals an environment to define their strategies and pursue their interests. Political actors will typically try to maximize their utility because they are aware of the impacts of such rules. Therefore, the interaction between deliberate individuals bound by the laws and institutions within which it occurs is understood as the political process.
For the sociology of work and organizations, Foucault’s later writings describing the elements of a theory of “governmentality” may be more valuable. Institutional policies affect people by changing their behavior. In this manner, governmentality seeks to mold individual subjectivities through influence and internalization. This results in creating self-producing people who internalize the desired governed behaviors. By acknowledging that self-governing humans are characterized and treated as entrepreneurs, Foucault accords particular importance to the rise of the human capital theory. People develop themselves as “assets” that will provide value to any institution, social relationship, or organization.
Conclusion
The practice of nursing should be pluralistic and critical of the negotiation of the policy space as well as the existing policy frameworks. According to this perspective, the task of working strategically with various frameworks that significantly impact decisions affecting their practice of providing high-quality healthcare services replaces the search for a singular health policy framework for nursing. The concept of power in the nursing profession can be seen as an inward sensation built on human values, making it beneficial for achieving professional greatness. This sense of power, rather than the actual amount, determines behavior – a concept explained above by Foucault. To increase the caliber of healthcare services offered to patients, a nurse’s power enables independent control of career affairs and a foothold and distinct position in collaborative processes with other team members, decision-making, and health policymaking.
References
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