Instructions

Use one of the following topics to prepare a virtual poster presentation to advocate a certain course of action to your legislator.

Possible topics include:

  • Scope of practice for APRNs;
  • Health care innovation;
  • Safe staffing;
  • Work environment health and safety;
  • Quality patient outcomes and nursing education;
  • Protect and improve the ACA,
  • Health care innovation;
  • Nursing workforce development,
  • Gun safety;
  • Mental health initiatives;
  • Immunizations

You will research a topic of interest from ANA’s legislative priorities and prepare as if you were going to have a serious discussion with your legislator. The goal in your discussion would be to influence your legislator to vote the way you wish him/her to vote. This discussion will serve as an opportunity to showcase your virtual poster presentation.

If you decide to create a poster presentation on safe staffing, make sure you understand the difference between a mandatory ratio model for staffing and an acuity-based model for staffing. There is an important difference between the two and each has legislation supporting it.

Prepare your poster to include the following:

  1. An attention-grabbing opening statement.
  2. A statement of the clearly delineated topic with your position on the topic. Cite the specific bill or need for a specific bill. 
  3. A clear statement of what you are asking your legislator to do.
  4. Three to five priority points which will serve as the basis of your persuasive argument to the legislator.  The purpose is to convince the legislator to support your position. These priority points should be evidence-based and cited.
  5. Provide opposing arguments to your position with rebuttal information-evidence based and cited.
  6. A compelling closing statement.
  7. References can either be a part of the poster or a separate page.

In the discussion board, give a brief statement (2-3 sentences) about your poster and why your issue is important. The poster will be graded using the poster rubric.

Instructor Commentary

Nursing is no longer a simple task-based practice, dependent on physician oversight for every aspect of care. Professional practice models today encompass nursing as the lynchpin in a complex care process. Nurses must be willing to make changes, and to demand a seat at the power table. Nurses’ roles are challenging in today’s regulatory, technological, and economic environment. We are faced by tremendous pressure and decreasing supports. Cost saving measures often lead to employee dissatisfaction and poor quality of care, errors, and attrition from the profession. It is nearly impossible to provide high quality care. Yet, new programs such as meaningful use and Medicare reimbursement focus on exactly that- quality and safety. Nursing leaders must keep the patient at the center of care, and using a symphonological approach to advocacy beyond the bedside does just that. We need to be the stakeholders, at the same table as key leadership in our organization, and in the halls of Congress as influential advisors.

The health care system is regulated by legislative actions. These actions, in turn, are heavily influenced by lobbying efforts. Legislators often learn about various issues from the public, either in-person or through written communication. Nurses are in a unique position to be very effective lobbyists, yet we are usually a silent majority whose voices are never heard on topics of critical importance, including our own issue of nursing shortages and working conditions. In this lesson, we will learn about lobbying as a way to ethically represent our patients.  

Nurses are the largest healthcare profession and therefore, could make a powerful difference engaging in political advocacy (Grant, 2020). However, we, as nurses, are often silent and how, by default, this creates a situation where our influence in shaping our practice is limited (Buresh & Gordon, 2013). When a nurse cannot shape his/her practice, by default that nurse cannot be an effective agent for his/her patient. We often forget that as an agent for the patient, our influence must extend beyond the bedside to the larger issues that direct care. As a nurse, that means understanding that the ethical practitioner is well versed in and participates with or leads others in creating policy. Understanding our silence and the need for a change in our own behavior regarding policy leadership is an important first step.  

Knowing the legislative process is as important to nursing as knowing how to safely deliver medication. How else can you impact the safety and other standards in health care? Basic knowledge in this arena is foundational to your role as the agent of the vulnerable. Every patient is vulnerable.  

Lobbying is an attempt to influence passage or defeat of legislation. A lobbyist is a person who is hired by an organization or volunteers as concerned citizens to help influence the legislative body in decision making. 

Committees hear testimony from interested parties and then recommend the bill as is, or amend it. If the committee opposes the bill, they will let it “die” in committee. Sometimes committees have several bills before them on similar subjects and they will often combine efforts and report out a “clean” bill that incorporates elements of all the bills originally brought before them.

Nurses can and should play a major role in the formulation of health policy. By understanding the political process and engaging in the process, consistently surveying new legislation, organizing into interest groups, and systematically contacting legislators, nurses can work the system to the advantage of their patients and the profession.

Reference

Buresh, B., & Gordon, S. (2013). From silence to voice. What nurses know and must communicate to the public (3rd ed.). ILR Press.

Grant, E. J. (2020). Engaging and advocatingAmerican Nurse Journal, 15(2), 14.

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