Increased Political Activism: The Nursing Staff - Essay Example

Nurses are usually the most powerful people on earth, given the fact that they have a remarkable potential to exercise tremendous power both in the societal and political arenas. This power emanates from the great body of healthcare knowledge that they possess and in their large numbers. Contrary to this absolute fact, most nurses do not maximize this policy-changing potential that they own. Regrettably, they view political activism not as a power tool but as a barrier to the furtherance of their nursing profession. This emanates from the view that nursing is about the application of service through actual involvement which politics does not entail (Rains and Barton-Kriese 219).

Political activism according to them is more about theory and more of discourse on subjects rather than actual involvement with patients, a feature that characterizes the nursing profession. This nursing view of political involvement is narrow and is the major reason for the pandemic nursing apathy towards political activism. Today’s nurse without political involvement, is more of a person busying himself with the process of rescuing a situation to the extent that he lacks time to find the root cause of the problem so as to eradicate it once and for all. This paper uses knowledge based on nursing history, change process, and views from nursing colleagues to design a plan of action that will increase political involvement among the nursing staff.

Nursing History and Political Involvement

Nursing involves the provision of care to individuals, communities, and families with the aim of helping them attain and maintain optimal health and quality of life (Basavanthappa 515). In the earlier years, nursing was associated with prostitutes, and female criminals serving their punishment. It was only after the well-educated and wealthy Florence Nightingale became a nurse, that this profession’s perception improved drastically and people began perceiving it as a respectable discipline (Small 14).

Political activism in nursing just like the profession itself is not a new phenomenon that is trying to seek acceptance today. Great nurses in history like Alena Jean MacMaster are known for being activists who always placed the government on its toes concerning health issues specifically, healthcare for the working poor people in the 1920’s (Godfrey 84). Another great activist is the American Lillian Wald who saw that her impoverished clients needed more than just healthcare. Driven by this perception she went ahead and established the Henry Street settlement where these patients and their families could receive both health and social services (Andrist, Nicholas, and Wolf 100). She later joined the fight to abolish child labor after realizing that forcing them to work in difficult and unsafe conditions was the major cause of their health problems.

Why Nurses Do Not Engage in Political Activism

This section contains major answers from two colleagues concerning their involvement in political activism. The questions asked were for the purposes of finding out the reasons for their lack of involvement, the barriers, and the relationship or conflict between patient care and political activism. The answers are outlined as follows;

1. Ways of Political Involvement

Nurses can be politically involved either by lobbying politicians to vote in a certain way about an issue or influencing them to carry the issue forward for debate. Political involvement can also be by whistle-blowing through disclosing harms while outside the organization.

1. Barriers to Involvement

Some of these barriers include a lack of knowledge of the legislative process which makes the nurses overwhelmed by the complexity of public policy, a heavy workload, and the lack of understanding of how to influence public policy.

1. Relationship between healthcare and political activism

            There actually exists a relationship between health care and nursing given the fact that, for nursing to be able to get favorable policies, it must be politically involved.

1. Why nurses do not engage politically

            There are a good number of reasons why nurses do not get politically involved, and they include issues like workload pressure, time constraints, sex issues, and a lack of knowledge about policy issues (Boswell, Cannon, and Miller 5). Apart from these factors, the reasons why nurses do not engage in political activism can be well understood by analyzing change theories and understanding how individuals adapt to new systems.

Plan of Action using Kurt Lewin’s Theory of Change

Lewin’s change theory suggests that change takes place through three stages which are unfreezing, change, and freezing or refreezing stages (Beer and Nohria 235). The unfreezing stage involves reducing the factors that are trying to maintain the status quo by dismantling the current mindset. The transition or change stage involves developing new values, attitudes, and behaviors. The freeze stage involves adapting the new changes as part of the normal ways of operation. Using Lewin’s approach the plan of action shall be worked out as below;

1. Unfreezing

In this stage the nurses will be drilled on the importance of political activism, the consequences if nurses do not participate in political activism, and the benefits of political activism.

1. Transition

            In this stage, the nurses have been awakened and will try to find ways of getting politically involved.

1. Refreezing

            In this stage, political activism has become part of the system and is characterized by a strong nurses union that can change the course of government policy making.

In conclusion, nursing goes hand in hand with political activism, given the fact that if nurses are to provide healthcare, they have to be concerned with the issues that affect this healthcare. A nurse who is not politically involved does not fully understand what entails his profession and is doing a disservice to the community, to himself, and to his nation.