Nursing is rated the first when it comes to the medical profession. An advanced practice nurse has the sole duty of providing primary care and preventative care to the patients. This kind of nurses may specialize in various areas of healthcare equipping them with clinical education.
An advanced practice nurse has the knowledge and skills required in the nursing circle. It is essential for an advanced practice nurse to engage in activism given the scope of knowledge he or she possesses. Activism is crucial as it involves advocating for particular changes within a specific field. The healthcare sector is a vital area that requires policy change to improve the health services offered to patients.
Engaging in activism as a nurse is beneficial, as one becomes an advocate on behalf of the patients', community and the organization as a whole.
An advanced practice nurse who engages in activism works in close collaboration with government lawmakers at every level. These legislators' need nurses who have a non-adversarial approach to assist them to come up with health policies for the health care organizations'.
Nurses who are activists regularly champion for a habitable and healthy working environment (Wise, 2014). Such an environment works best for the patients as well as the staff working within the health organization.
A nurse who is an activist plays a significant role in the delivery of a working health care system. Nurses ought to be provided with opportunities and awareness on how to venture in activism. They are vital in the development and the implementation of health care policies (Forrester, 2016). Nurses understand health care better hence can offer great advice when passing such laws as they are equipped with knowledge and experience.
A percentage of nurses in the United States are members of various unions. These nurses earn a little more than non-unionized nurses. Collective bargaining by unions has both the positive and negative impacts.
Generally, by joining the union, nurses waive the responsibility of directly getting involved with employers in creating pay scales, other benefit packages, ratio of nurse to patient and defining roles in favor of nurses. Therefore, it is very important for nurses to join unions.
In addition, Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) essentials proposes inter-professional collaboration so as to improve outcomes of patient and population health (IOM, 2003). This involves collaboration with unions and other professional organizations. Therefore, to pursue masters in nursing, it may be significant for an individual to be unionized.
Unionizing nurses often impact the workforce culture of safety in various different ways. Joining nurses' unions ensures job security for their members in that most unions prohibit employment termination that lacks cause and in case of disciplinary action, they offer representation to ascertain fair treatment (Stone et al., 2008).
It also ensures better working conditions for members by consistently advocating for higher ratios of nurse-to-patient and better rules and protocols for safety. Unions also ensure safety laying down processes for addressing grievances and complaints that protects employees from reprisal. Also, the workforce pay automatically increases as mentioned in the union contract.
This prevents the employers from reducing employee wages hence promote safety within the workforce. However, joining the union comes with a little insecurity especially when the union faces a threat of strike in demand for better working conditions. As a member u must also be a part of the striking force without any payment, otherwise you would be angered or violently attacked by the members of the union.