Influencing Healthcare Policy: The Role of Nurses

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the legislative process and the manner in which the nursing profession can influence this process. Too often, nurses underestimate their potential to shape public policy regarding healthcare. Nurses can, and do, possess the necessary experience and skill to influence lawmakers, but do not always exercise this ability. This paper will explore the means by which nurses can impact the formation, implementation, and revision of healthcare policies in this country. Legislative Process The legislative process begins when someone drafts a bill for consideration by Congress. A sponsor is needed to present the bill to Congress, and the sponsor must be a member of Congress (Congress.org) The bill is considered …show more content…

Some consider it to be on the same continuum as palliative care, but palliative care seeks to neither postpone nor hasten the end of life in terminal patients. Aggressive pain management can eliminate or minimize patient suffering. A tremendous discrepancy can exist as to what constitutes “quality of life.” The quality of life that so many argue in favor of is not always measurable and should not apply to human beings. People are becoming comfortable with the idea that life must have a certain quality to be worth living. A life which would be considered unbearable to some can be considered a wrongful life, often discriminating against disabled persons. Suicide is not reversible. Patients cannot change their minds if conditions change. Illness or disability is not convenient for families or physicians, and certainly not for the patient, but arguing in favor of assisted suicide ignores the patient’s real fears of abandonment, pain, rejection, loneliness, and loss of value. If we allow the quality-of-life argument to permeate all levels of medicine and ethics, we ignore the sanctity of life. Even if one rejects the idea that life is a God-given gift, the intrinsic value of every life can still be argued. With the appropriate euphemisms, any killing can be justified, but this slippery slope, this sliding scale of who lives and who dies, puts all of us in the crosshairs of euthanasia, not just the elderly, the infirm, or the

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