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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the level and type of public policy involvement, as well as perceptions regarding public policy involvement of nurse practitioners. A four-page survey was mailed to a sample of 600 certified nurse practitioners, randomly selected from the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners' database. A three-stage mailing procedure yielded a 73% response rate. Most (59.6%) were involved in three or less public policy activities. The most frequently indicated activities included voting (87%) and giving money to a campaign (57%). Lack of time was the most frequently cited barrier, while improving the health of the public was cited most often as a benefit. Overall, nurse practitioners felt they had limited knowledge on how to go about changing public policy, were somewhat interested in public policy issues, believed the actions of public policymakers were very important, and believed these actions influenced the public's health. The majority (79%) had received some information/education on public policy change. Those most active in public policy had high public policy efficacy expectations and perceived a high number of benefits to public policy involvement.

Advocacy and Public Policy Perceptions and Involvement of Master Certified Health Education Specialists

“…For example, in previous studies, although health professionals perceived advocacy and influencing public policy as important, and a higher percentage reported benefits than barriers, they also reported a lack of professional preparation in this area and did not feel confident in their ability to perform certain advocacy activities. Most received their training in advocacy from conference sessions or journal articles rather than college coursework (Holtrop, Price, & Boardley, 2000; Oden, Price, Alteneder, Boardley, & Ubokudom, 2000; Thompson, Boardley, Kerr, Greene, & Jenkins, 2009). These studies, using a precursor to the questionnaire used in the present study, were conducted with health educators (Holtrop et al, 2000), nurses (Oden et al 2000), and health commissioners (Thompson et al, 2009).…”

Kenyan Nurses Involvement in National Policy Development Processes

“…Rather they were involved in policy implementation. Literature further reveals several reasons for nurses underengagement in policy including lack of awareness of policy related issues and processes, inadequate knowledege and skills on how to contribute to policies, and lack of opportunities to contribute to policy decisions [ 9 – 11 ]. Nurses' limited participation in policy processes has also been attributed to gender differences in the health care system [ 12 , 13 ].…”

Measuring nurses' health policy participation: WSPPIR instrument development and psychometric evaluation

“…The WSPPIR instrument shares some similarities with other instruments designed to assess concepts like health policy participation. For example, voting behaviour appears in four instruments-the WSPPIR instrument and those developed/used by Clark (2008), Oden et al (2000) and Hanley (1987). Other measured concepts are communal activity (communication with legislators and community action; Hanley, 1987), working on a coalition and contact with a public official (Oden et al, 2000); these are addressed by items for Mindset and involvement in collaborative efforts to improve health in the Valuing Health and Policy subscale of the WSPPIR instrument.…”

“…Efforts to understand how nurses participate in health policy have been evident in the nursing literature for decades. Concepts studied vary from political participation (Hanley, 1987), to public policy involvement (Oden et al, 2000), to organized political participation (Cramer, 2002;Vandenhouten et al, 2011), to political astuteness (Primomo & Bjorling, 2013;VandeeWaa et al, 2019). As can be seen in Box 1, despite a lack of agreement about the concepts to study and terminology to address nurses' involvement in policy and advocacy, there is a growing body of literature addressing ways to conceptualize and measure nurses' health policy participation globally.…”

“…• Political participation (Hanley, 1987) • Nurse Practitioners' Involvement in Public Policy (Oden et al, 2000) • Predictors of organized political participation using the Civic Volunteerism Model (Cramer, 2002) • Nurses political participation using Civic Voluntarism Model (Vandenhouten et al, 2011) • Political Astuteness, via the Political Astuteness Inventory (Primomo & Bjorling, 2013;VandeeWaa et al, 2019;Clark, 2008) • Nurses' levels of knowledge and involvement in health policy development in Thailand (Kunaviktikul et al, 2010) • Knowledge transfer and exchange processes between researchers and policy makers in Israel (Ellen et al, 2014) • Internal and external political efficacy among nurse practitioners (O'Rourke et al, 2017).…”