Essay on The Need for Nurses to Engage in Political Involvement

The Need for Nurses to Engage in Political Involvement There has been a pandemic apathy towards political activism among the nursing fraternity, despite the fact that politics to a greater extent affects the way these medical practitioners carry out their duty of providing care. Nurses have not seen any reason for political involvement citing that no direct relationship exists between nursing and political activism (Boswell, Canon and Miller 5). They claim that nursing is about application and service, demonstration by involvement and more of ‘walking the walk’ rather than the political ‘talking the talk’ (Rains and Barton-Kriese 219). Political activism to them is a waste of the precious time that could be used to provide healthcare to …show more content…

Apart from the Affordable Care Act, there has been increased government and court involvement in the determination of how healthcare issues are run, like the recent denial of the nonprofit tax exemption status to some hospitals in Chicago (Bergen 2). These hospitals, which include the Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Prentice Women’s Hospital, are known to provide important healthcare services to patients who cannot afford to pay the expensive costs in private hospitals (Bergen 2). These unfavorable healthcare policies among others are bound to be more frequent and the resultant problems may promote the emergence of other bigger ones unless immediate action is taken. The nurse today can be compared to a person who busies himself/herself with process of rescuing a situation to the extent that he/she finds no time to investigate the real cause of the problem. If a nurse could know the real cause of the problem, then he/she would be capable of eradicating it once and for all. This act of finding the real cause of the problem is what entails political activism and this is what should be running in the blood of every nurse.
Political Activism in Nursing Politics in itself is a means to an end, in which case the end is the formation of a public policy. It is the process of trying to influence the decision makers in order to implement changes that will improve the lives of communities, populations and clients (Godfrey 84). In short, politics refers to