Participate in Processes to Influence Health Care Delivery System
Issues Project
In N260 I participated in a group project that researched a particular issue in the health field and wrote a paper and presentation for our class. My project was about organ donation in the United States and how our system could be improved to gain a higher number of donors and shorten the wait-list for organs
Continuous Quality Improvement Project
During my Senior 1 semester in my leadership class, I worked with my peers to improve the health care system by creating a plan to decrease nosocomial infection related the uniforms of health care workers. In this project, my group and I created a proposal for hospital laundered uniforms and locker rooms for changing, in order to have better patient outcomes related to nosocomial infection.
Letter to a Legislator
After attending Nurse Legislative Day and becoming more aware of the role of nurses in policy and politics during my Senior 2 semester, I wrote a letter to my legislator. In this letter, I encouraged my Senator, Debbie Regala, to vote to approve SB 5563, which addresses issues of uninterrupted rest and meal breaks for employees of health care facilities and closes loopholes in current mandatory overtime laws.
I believe that nurses have a large amount of power that has not yet been accessed or fully used. We are respected and trusted by the public and take provide vital and life changing care to those we encounter. It is because of these factors that we have such a huge opportunity to participate in influencing the health care delivery system. Some assignments that I have taken part in over the course of the last four years have allowed me given me the opportunity to begin to influence the health care delivery system.
One of the first group projects that I worked on in the nursing program was my "Issues Project" in Professional Foundations I. In doing this project I was able to talk to the class about how to become an organ donor, as well as explain how health care workers can influence the decisions that families make about whether or not to donate the organs of their loved one. This project demonstrates the participation outcome by showing that I was able to give future health care workers tips on how to deal with families who may want to donate their loved one's organs so that they can get the best results.This project also demonstrates that considering ideas used in other countries or coming up with creative ideas is a way that nurses can offer input into how to change the system of health care delivery. By informing my fellow classmates on the issues involved in organ donation they, as future nurses, will be more effective in helping patients through this process within the health care system.
Hospitals are constantly trying to improve their services and improve their patient outcomes in order to increase employee and client satisfaction. While in my senior year, I worked on a continuous quality improvement project with my peers to decrease the spread of nosocomial infection related to the uniforms of health care workers. From this project, we developed a proposal for nurses to wear hospital-laundered uniforms and be provided with a locker room for changing before and after work. Through our research, interviews, surveys, we had enough information in our proposal to demonstrate to Good Samaritan Hospital why our project should be implemented and how it would effectively decrease nosocomial infection in the hospital setting to improve the health care delivery system and patient outcomes. Another way of influencing the health care delivery system is to influence the legislative processes that govern the health care system. In February of 2009, I was able to attend Nurse Legislative Day in Olympia, WA. It was at this event that I began to delve into the world of policy and politics, and gained a deeper understanding of the voice that nursing has in the government. During one of the morning presentation at Nurse Legislative Day, members of the Washington State Nurse's Association (WSNA) discussed the their top legislative priorities for the 2009 year. Based on some of the information provided in this presentation, I was encouraged to write a letter to my legislator for my Nursing Policy class. In my letter, I urged my legislator to vote for the bill to require uninterrupted meal breaks for health care workers and close loopholes in mandatory overtime laws.Through this letter, I was able to voice my opinion and potentially influence the opinion of my legislator. This letter is one example of how nurses and nursing students can promote change in the health care delivery system at the governmental level.
I feel that influencing the health care delivery system is an area where I have a huge opportunity for growth and increasing my level of involvement. My liberal arts education has provided me with a strong foundation of knowledge in many areas. The information and experiences gained from all my classes have helped me to become a well-rounded individual, and will make me a stronger, well-informed nurse. Furthermore, my classes during my senior year have given me more opportunities to influence care than ever before, but I believe that there will be even more opportunities for me once I graduate. Whether it be on my own hospital unit, in my organization, or at the legislative level, I am now more aware of the voice that I have in changing the current health care system and the power that I have to change and improve things, especially when using my knowledge and creativity in unity with other agents of change.
