Nursing And Policy: The Nursing Profession

Superior Essays
Nursing and Policy Nurses have many opportunities to engage in politics during their career by advocating for individuals rights and for the community. Nurses have strong influences in the healthcare community, which makes them the frontrunner in promoting governmental policy changes. Nursing organizations are excellent lobbying groups because have strong political influences and can use their strength in numbers to draw attention to certain legislation, while promoting health and policy changes. The nursing profession has an estimated three million members and united, nurses can be patient advocators, change agents and policy makers (Nies & McEwen, 2015). This paper will describe the current childhood immunization legislation and propose …show more content…
I believe that this would decrease the occurrence of contagious disease from emerging in local communities. In addition, mandatory education sessions headed by nurses to inform parents about the benefits of vaccinations and common side effects will give families the facts on the benefits of immunization. In order for this to be effective, nurses need to work collaboratively with state and local representatives to enact the legislation because vaccination laws vary among states. Immunization is one of the most important disease preventing mechanisms that industrialized countries have to protect children from the diseases and parents from the fear of infection (Diver, C., 2015). This would affect the nursing practice by decreasing the spread of preventable disease among school age children and the community. The community health nurse’s role is to prevent widespread diseases in the community therefore, this policy change will create healthier children with better quality of life while improving health qualities in every …show more content…
Nurses can set some time from their busy schedule to look into becoming politically involved. This will give nurses the opportunity to make important changes that has an impact on the health of the community. Advocating to elected officials on heath information regarding their constituents needs gives good information concerning issues that need intervened and resolved. Nurses can unite by forming a coalition to address the growing problems and make improvement plans for healthcare changes within their communities.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014) Vaccines & Immunizations In Recommendations and Guidelines. Retrieved on October 30, 2015 from http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/default.htm
Driver, C. (2015). Case studies in childhood vaccination. Nurse Prescribing, 13(3), 122-128 7p. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.ohiou.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=84e80c0b-7334-4f8a-b395-0595b65697a7%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=112
Nies, M.A., & McEwen, M. (2015). Community/public health nursing: Promoting the health of populations (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Saunders.
Orenstein, D. G., & Yang, Y. T. (2015). From Beginning to End: The Importance of Evidence-Based Policymaking in Vaccination Mandates. Journal Of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 4399-102 4p.

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