According to Sharrif, (2014), although nurses comprise a large percentage of the healthcare profession, they have been mainly side-lined with regards to the issue of policy formation and advocacy even though they are the best placed to propose, initiate and implement policy and advocacy owing to their first-hand experience in medical matters. Policies in healthcare are significant factors that hugely impact the quality and the nursing practice as a whole. Initially, factors that barred nurses’ opinions from consideration included the lack of sufficient education, improper understanding of the medical profession, and the general image of the nurses. Today, however, the majority of the nursing profession comprises women, and this is seen as a significant contributing factor to the lack of their representation in the process of policy formation and advocacy.
Gender is a significant factor for operation in the healthcare workforce. According to Newman (2014), there is systematic gender discrimination as well as efficient inequalities that are being castigated against nurses. Nurses are in the best position to propose amendments to policies that affect the healthcare industry because of their close relationships with the patients and their understanding of the healthcare environment (Ayalaa et al., 2014). However, physicians and other healthcare personnel higher in the hierarchy of healthcare management usually are highly regarded when it comes to such matters as medical environments and other health-related issues. Such a view is biased and needs to be reexamined to ensure that the policies borne out of such resolutions are fruitful and bound to succeed in real-life environments.
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Overall, even though nurses constitute the most significant number of healthcare practitioners, they remain side-lined with regards to the issues of healthcare policy formation and implementation as well as advocacy. This is highly linked to the fact that the majority of the nursing workforce comprises women, who have historically socially been sidelined.
References
Ayalaa, R., Holmqvist, M., Messing, H., & Browne, R. (2014). Blessed art thou among women: male nursing students and gender inequalities in Chile. Nurse Education Today, 34 (12), 1480-1484. doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2014.04.022
Newman, C. (2014). Time to address gender discrimination and inequality in the health workforce. Hum Resour Health, 12 (23), 122-132. doi: 10.1186/1478-4491-12-25
Share, N. (2014). Factors that act as facilitators and barriers to nurse leaders' participation in health policy development. NCBI, 13 (12), 13-20. doi: 10.1186/1472-6955-13-20
