Advocating for new policies is an important aspect of the master’s-prepared nurse. For new policies to be compelling, they need to be supported by evidence. Supporting data can be used to illustrate why new policies and interventions are needed to help address a specific health issue. Compelling data can help sway the stakeholders and gain support for your policy.
Another aspect of advocacy is disseminating new policies and interventions outside of the immediate care environment. This can be done by reaching out to professional organizations as well as academic and professional journals. A letter to the editor is one strategy for disseminating information to a wider audience and to potentially enlist support throughout the wider professional community.
Nurses have the opportunity to use their skills and develop programs to keep individuals and communities healthy. Health is complex, however, and the nurse needs to possess strong advocacy skills to successfully support a cause or interest. The American Nurses Association’s (2015) code of ethics describes the responsibility of a nurse to include working through and with appropriate stakeholders to advocate for the health of people in and out of the work environment. To be an effective advocate, there are several important abilities a nurse must possess, including problem-solving, communication, and influencing others. One way a nurse can advocate to a broader population is through effective letter writing, both to legislators and through the media, such as with editorials and research articles.
Throughout this course, you have focused on a specific health issue occurring within a specific population negatively impacted by health inequity. You researched position papers regarding this health concern, and you developed a health policy proposal to positively impact the health of the affected individuals. It is now time to reach a greater audience regarding your policy proposal.
You are going to write a letter to the editor of a peer-reviewed nursing journal. Choose from one of the journals in the Ultimate List of Nursing Journals (attached) and go to the journal’s website to find out the requirements for submitting an editorial, such as format requirements, topics, and word counts. Make sure you select a nursing journal that covers the topic about which you are going to write. If you want to use another journal that is not on this list, please make sure the journal does address healthcare, because this is the purpose of the assessment.
For this assessment, you will write a letter to the editor of a scholarly journal in response to an article in that selected journal. Your goal is to be informative about the policy that you developed for your previous Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal assessment ( I attached this as well) , while also being persuasive about the need for and benefit of similar policies in other healthcare settings. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your assessment submission addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy [PDF] Download Guiding Questions: Letter to the Editor: Population Health Policy Advocacy [PDF] ( attached) to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.
Evaluate the current state of the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population negatively impacted by health inequity.
Look back to the data or scenario you used in your previous assessment to address this criterion.
Analyze how the current state of the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population necessitates health policy development and advocacy.
Justify why the developed policy will be vital in improving the quality of care and outcomes for a specific issue in a target population.
Advocate for policy development in other care settings with regard to a specific issue in a target population.
Analyze the ways in which an interdisciplinary team strategizes to develop a policy that supports efficient and effective achievement of desired outcomes for the target population.
Communicate in a professional and persuasive manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style (or the journal’s preferred style).
Be sure the article you choose to respond to is relatively current, meaning published within the last five years.
The submission requirements for your editorial will depend on the journal you choose. To find out the requirements, go to the journal’s Web site. There should be a section regarding submissions that will address how to format letters to the editor, and whether there is a word count limit (there usually is a limit).
If the journal does not have submission guidelines for the number of resources required, use 3–5 sources.
To be sure that your faculty knows the submission and formatting requirements for your letter, include the journal’s guidelines on a separate page at the end of the document you submit for this assessment.
Be sure that the article your respond to has been published within the last five years.
REFERENCE
American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/Eth…
Example assessment: You may use the Assessment 3 Example [PDF] Download Assessment 3 Example [PDF] ( attached) to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like.
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