Advocacy Issues in Nursing & Healthcare Leadership

In June 2022, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that shook the nation and took away women’s right to privacy in reproductive decisions. The Dobs v. Jackson verdict overturned the long-standing Roe v Wade decision that granted this autonomy to women across the country.

It’s clear that what these executives fear most is not the actual cost of paying travel nurses but rather what that cost signifies. Nurses who know their worth and demand competitive compensation packages and workplace safety measures are a threat to the system at large, and they will do anything to protect the status quo because it’s working perfectly for them.

Each year, the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) awards its Nursing Continuing Professional Development (NCPD) Premier Award™ to accredited organizations that demonstrate excellence in NCPD. Presented to one or more fully accredited programs each year, the award recognizes recipients for a two-year period.

The healthcare community is a partnership between scientific research and clinical practice. For most of modern history, both arenas have been dominated by physicians. But as the healthcare workforce has expanded and the interprofessional care team emerged, nurse practitioners (NPs) have proven to be vital in delivering healthcare services in America.

Under popular value-based care models, nursing rates are wrapped into the bigger hospital bill, making their contributions to business revenue invisible. Hospitals are rewarded for understaffing nurses because nurses are viewed as a cost in this financial model, no different than the gauze they use to wrap a wound or the IV pool they hang medications on.

Since the height of the pandemic, the number of nurse entrepreneurs has increased significantly, and the trend shows no sign of slowing, thanks in large part to the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which have made finding creative and lucrative business ideas easier than ever.

Advocacy is woven deeply into the nurse practitioner role. It’s a part of the job that’s never finished. Advocacy can occur at a micro level, by advocating one-on-one for a particular patient, or at the macro level, by lobbying for policy changes; it’s often a mix of the two. For many NPs, advocacy is about an issue close to their heart, one connected to underserved patients who deserve additional support. For two NP experts, the issue is children and youth in foster care.

Coined by the Nursing Executive Centre of the Advisory Board, the experience-complexity gap describes the dangerously widening difference between the average nurse’s knowledge today and the rapidly increasing complexity of the patients they serve and the technology they must oversee. Put simply, patients have never been sicker, the technology required to keep them alive has never been more involved, and the nurses overseeing their care have never been less knowledgeable and experienced, through no fault of their own.

NPs in states that offer the most practice autonomy will find the easiest path to opening their own practice. Whereas NPs working in states with restricted practice must find a supervising physician to collaborate with them.

For many NPs, advocacy concerns a particular issue close to their heart, one connected to underserved patients who deserve additional support. For Dr. Jessica Peck, the issue is the fight against human trafficking.