Role of a nurse a patient advocate through policy competency

Developing nursing resources for mental care is a policy are that nurses can play an advocacy role. Though many people suffer from mental problems, a majority of them lack access to effective treatment and care. Nurses are critical to the provision of mental health care because they offer primary and specialist care. Nonetheless, the psychiatric education and training of nurses is insufficient and their part in providing mental care is small. Therefore, nurses should be integrated into mental health care. However, they lack the knowledge and skills to diagnose mental illnesses. This can be achieved by incorporating mental health into nurse education early and ensuring it is part of ongoing curricula. Additionally, opportunities for experiential learning should be provided to nurses during training. 

Developing nursing resources for mental health can benefit from nursing advocacy. Longest’s policy Cycle Model can be applied in the development of nursing resources on mental health. The model mirrors how the U.S policy making functions. In its simplest form, the model is made up of three phases: formulation, implementation, and modification phases (Mason, Gardner, Outlaw, and O’Grady, 2015). The policy modification phase includes all the actions of policy design, comprising the activities that inform legislators. The policy implementation phase include rule making, which is the passage of law by the legislature for the executive branch to implement. Finally, the policy modification phase entails changes to the policy to remove unintended consequences. Nurses can play meaningful advocacy roles in the formulation and implementation phases. In the formulation phase, nurses can function as knowledge sources for legislators in framing the problem and bringing real life examples of the problem in the population (Mason et al., 2015). As a stakeholder group with significant numbers, nurses can exert substantial influence during the implementation phase. During the implementation phase, nurses can use their expertise to monitor and affect how the laws are written. Thus, nurses can play an advocacy role in the development of nursing resources for mental health. 

Reference 

Mason, D., Gardner, D., Outlaw, F., and O’Grady, E. (2015). Policy and politics in nursing and healthcare . Saunders.