What are your plans for the future?

This is the original Nursing Discussion :Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) are prepared to offer advanced solutions to the healthcare system to enhance quality, access, affordability, and reduce the overall cost of healthcare. Nevertheless, healthcare policies may affect their practice and render their sophisticated skills in ineffective, therefore obscuring their ability to contribute to the healthcare system. For instance, the scope of practice for APRNs is pegged to the prevailing practice policies. Policies that reduce the scope of APRNs hinder their practice to the full extent of their preparation and training. On the other hand, while APRNs should be at the forefront to offer health promotion and disease prevention interventions at a community or population level; disease prevention and health promotion are affected by multiple factors that are determined by the prevailing health policies on health coverage for vulnerable populations as well as the existence of effective primary care policies, infrastructures, and resources. Therefore, in as much as they intend to use their skills effectively to enhance positive health outcomes; APRNs usually encounter policy-related barriers (DeNisco & Barker, 2015).As such, the only avenue to ensure that the policies adopted are in favor of APRNs is through advocacy. Nursing advocacy is one of the integral roles of APRNs and the fact they these nurses possess sophisticated skills in leadership, communication, and health promotion; competencies in this area of practice can be leveraged to foster healthcare policy reforms that are not only favorable to the entire healthcare system but also the populations and APRN practice. The prime reason why the role or scope of APRNs cannot be divorced from advocacy stems from the fact that nurses at large have regular and in-depth interaction with patients, populations, communities, and healthcare processes. This places them at a vantage point when it comes to the identification of healthcare deficits as well as areas that require improvements through policy-making and implementation (DeNisco & Barker, 2015). The practice characteristics of APRNs coupled with their specialized skills in leadership, communication, population health, and coordination make them a strategic group whose intricate interaction and experiences with the healthcare system can be leveraged to iron out various challenges facing the healthcare system at large. Therefore, APRNs ought to be at the forefront in terms of influencing health policies and this is through various advocacy strategies such as legislative advocacy. In particular, legislative advocacy involves nursing lobbying to ensure that strategic policies are adopted in the legislature. Nurses represent the largest healthcare workforce and equipped with numbers, consolidating their voice into one can go a long way towards enhancing their policy bargaining power, and lending a positive influence to the policymaking process.Taking into account that advocacy requires the mobilization of people and different stakeholders; effective leadership is of utmost importance in as far as APRNs’ advocacy is concerned. The transformational leadership style stands out as the most effective approach in leading advocacy and policymaking efforts. This leadership style is pillared on four major ideals. These pillars include “individualized consideration”, “inspirational motivation”, “idealized influence”, and “intellectual stimulation” (Fischer, 2017). Individualized consideration is the leader’s ability to consider the unique needs, talents, and weaknesses of every team member while inspirational motivation is the leader’s ability to offer motivation and inspire every team member to give their best. Idealized influence requires the leader to “lead by example” whereby he/she shows optimal commitment to the vision and at the same time, upholds a high level of integrity and ethics. Intellectual stimulation represents the leader’s ability to trigger creativity, innovation, new ideas, and encourages personal learning or growth. In conclusion, these four pillars of transformative leadership can be termed as the blueprint that APRNs should use when leading advocacy missions to attract success.ReferencesDeNisco, S.M., & Barker, A. M. (2015). Advanced practice nursing: Essential knowledge for the Profession. (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Publishers.Fischer, S. A. (2017). Developing nurses’ transformational leadership skills. Nursing Standard, 31(51).This is the professor Question based on the original nursing post Thank you for opening our discussion about APNs as health policy leaders. I commend your recommendation for political action, so let’s talk more about ways nurses, especially advanced practice nurses, can influence political change. In 2010 the Institutes for Medicine (IOM) published The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. in this report, the IOM called for several actions to promote nursing advancement, including the recommendation that nurses serve on boards or health care panels to provide their perspectives about advancing health. As a result, in 2014 the Nurses on Boards aimed for 10,000 nurses on boards by 2020 (Nurses on Boards, n.d.). Progress has been made, but many more nurses are still needed to meet this goal. What are your plans for the future? Will you heed the call for action and join an organization like Nurses on Boards?Thank you, CandiceInstitute of Medicine (2010). The future of nursing, leading change, advancing health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.Nurses on Boards Coalition. n.d.) “About.” Retrieved from: https://www.nursesonboardscoalition.org/about/. The writer just needs to answer the question that the professor ask based on the original Nursing post listed below Week 7: Readings Due Sunday by 11:59pm Points None Buppert, C. (2017). Nurse practitioner’s business practice & legal guide (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett.Chapter 17 Strategies for nurse practitionersDeNisco, S.M., & Barker, A. M. (2015). Advanced practice nursing: Essential knowledge for the Profession. (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Publishers.Chapter 5 Influencing and Leading change in the complex healthcare environment. The role of the advanced practice nurse