Bethany Hall-Long was born in the year 1963 in Sussex County, the state of Delaware, the United States of America (Bethany Hall-Long, 2018). Bethany is famous for being the first healthcare professional to be elected to the Delaware general assembly. The drive to her nursing endeavors kicked off when she offered to be a volunteer at a local community hospital. She was around twelve by then and worked as a candy striper. Her political career began with her keen interested in politics during her college years (Bethany Hall-Long, 2018). She joined a political party by then. Her great-grandfather who was a member of the Delaware House of Representatives in the 1920's inspired her. It made Bethany a descendant of the sixteenth governor to the state of Delaware. She gained a keen interest in politics when she was serving underserved residents at one point in the studies that would see her complete a Master’s degree in community health in the 1980's. Marylin began working with a few organizations locally to revolutionize the lives of the community. Remarkably, she worked with a federal health clinic, which served the homeless in the local community. That duplicated her interest in politics. The experiences in helping the homeless and the underserved community members were vital factors that changed her original perspective of the political arena. She would think it was a somewhat dry area of concern that did not really require a lot of attention. That was to wholesomely change her life and make her the first health care practitioner to join the Delawarean political arena.
Marylin Waugh Bouldin sat in a hospital meeting as part of the audience of a hospital board meeting at a rural health care center in the state of Colorado, the United States of America in February 2012. Marylin kept wondering how she would convince five board members of the hospital that there was a need to support the uninsured patients at the clinic. She was the president of the independent nonprofit clinic board of directors and had worked formerly as a nurse and a health director. In her issue of the Coloradoan hospital not catering for the patients who lacked insurance, Marylin was concerned with the hospital meeting the needs of the Coloradoan local population. Her driver towards the political endeavors was the issue of the uninsured patients who were not cared for by the hospital. The discussion at the hospital in February 2012 commenced, and the topic of discussion was the election of new hospital board members. Marylin had a quick thought and concluded that she could do that. The opportunity was another factor that enables Marylin to pursue her interest in politics. She began her campaigning to become a member of the board of directors at the community hospital. The other factor that drove her deeper into the political arena at her place of work was her belief that nurses should fully collaborate with the other medical care professionals in the design of the healthcare systems. That was after the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report on the future of nursing. She took that opportunity to serve in the office.
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One of the challenges that Bethany Hall-Long faced in her political journey was her defeat in 2000 after running for a public office in the Delaware legislature. Pressured by all the factors that had made Bethany seek a political standing in Delaware, she may have been stressed out by the fact that she lost by one percent to the winner of the public office in the legislature. She articulated it as running for office saying that there is a reason why it is referred to as that. Her getting to the public office was supposed to be a race and not just a simple entrance into the public office. She was lucky to run again and win in 2002 after a political redistricting left a vacant seat in the same year. It was, nevertheless, a tight race. The other challenge that Bethany has faced in her political endeavor is the distancing from her family. From January to July in any given year. She has to work between eight and twelve hours to ensure that the fiscal year of the Delawarean legislature will be completed by the beginning of July. She has to attend a series of board meetings with various officials to get her work done. She has, therefore, had to spend time away from her family and her scholarship. Nonetheless, she would encourage the other nurses to be part of public service and run for elected offices as well. That will improve the approach of both their nursing and political careers.
Marylin's advocacy journey was not without hurdles. Traditionally, nurses were not welcomed in the boardroom. That was to be the first official challenge to her road to becoming an advocate and at the same time a health worker. She was to be faced with open opposition to her ideas and campaign to become a member of the board at the local hospital in the state of Colorado. Marylin did not accept any monetary donations for her campaign expenses. That meant that she had to use up most of her financial resources to fund her campaign. Marylin feared that she would be beheld to the people who would have contributed to her campaign. Undoubtedly, that was a wrong decision she had made on her part. Marylin did not develop a budget to divide her money among her campaign-based activities in the quest to become one of the board members elected at the hospital. At the end of the campaign period, she discovered that she had already used up over $600. The idea of going out to town and placing flyers on windshields was not a great idea, as stated by a strange man who showed up at Marylin's door after her campaign work in town on a windy down. The man said that Marylin had been polluting the streets of the town. That would have quickly ruined her reputation and sent a negative word for her as an aspiring board member at the Coloradoan hospital. She then had to work between her interest in nursing and legislation, which was proven difficult for most of the people going that route.
Bethany's drivers into both the nursing and the political careers prepared the way for her election to the office later in life. The efforts that began when she was twelve ensured that she started a liberal mindset at an early age in life. Voluntary work in nursing drove Bethany into her public service career. That is similar to me as a nursing advocate since I too started at the voluntary level doing simple tasks for the community hospitals in my locality. Bethany's political interest, which began while she was in college, is an inspiration to my political endeavors and dreams as well. Her challenges have almost become a hindrance to her work in the nursing legislation. Firstly, she had to race hard for the office in her district in Delaware, which she initially lost. Her dedication and optimism, however, saw her in the position two years later. Such values would help me in the next five years to become a better advocate for the community health and its integration of politics (Latimer, 2014). Secondly, her challenge of juggling among her family, legislation, and nursing education see her waking up at dawn to exercise and prepare for series of meetings that will preoccupy her for the rest of the day. From Bethany's challenge, I can expand my skills such as multitasking and proper scheduling of the day's activities so that I can handle both my nursing and political careers (Latimer, 2014). That will make me a better advocate in the next five years where I will be ready to serve the community of both the healthcare and the political fields.
Somewhat related to the drivers of Bethany to the nursing legislation, Marylin's political journey was fueled by her desire to join the board of directors at the Coloradoan hospital and ensure that the patients who were not insured were well taken care of by the healthcare institution. Her exposure to nursing in the past was instrumental to her desperate efforts to campaign to be a member of the board of directors at the hospital (Brodbeck, 2018). Such factors are important in my quest to become an advocate in the nursing field. I have always wanted to identify a need in the community and fulfill it by serving the community and responding to their needs (Brodbeck, 2018). The actions of Marylin are an inspiration to me on the same. Her challenges are almost identical to those of Bethany. For instance, Marylin had to ensure that both the nursing and the legislation careers were taken care of, not to mention her family that would continuously need her. Such challenges are essential to my desire to learn how to work on a tight schedule and do things in good time (Brodbeck, 2018). That will be inherent to the achievement of my advocacy career. From Marylin's case, I have also learned that I need to establish a healthy relationship network who will help me in the advancement of my nursing and advocacy careers. I also require planning my strategies well to avoid ending up with a deficit in my financial resources as Marylin had spent $ 600 in the campaign, which was higher than her anticipated expenditure.
References
Bethany Hall-Long. (2018). Bethany Hall-Long . Retrieved from http://hall-long.com/about.html
Brodbeck, J. (2018). Nursing and Politics. AJN: The American Journal of Nursing , 118 (3), 10.
Latimer, J. (2014). Guest editorial: Nursing, the politics of organisation and meanings of care. Journal of Research in Nursing , 19 (7-8), 537-545.
