Organizations such as the American Nurses Association have goals of bettering health care practice and standards and also a goal of representing nurses and supporting them in the profession. Professional nursing organizations want to make the environment for the professionals good in turn helping to make the patient care/ outcomes good. Professional nursing organizations are responsible for the development and certification of nurses interested in improving health care and providing safe quality nursing care. Through participation in professional organizations, nurses can actively contribute to legislative changes that can affect patient care and the way they conduct their work (Helbig 2018). Nursing organizations advocate for nursing practice through publicly and legislatively outlined rules and regulations that depict standards of practice, this helps nurses have a written guideline for their profession, it helps to outline the directive of what is ok to do as a nurse.
In turn this protects the nurse and advocates for the nurse as well as keeps the nurse in the educated and in the know so they can protect their license by practicing within their scope. The standards of practice describe a competent level of nursing practice demonstrated by the critical-thinking model known as the nursing process (Bickford, Marion, & Gazaway, 2015). ANA is an organization that supports the nurse, they have the goal in advocating for the nurse and raising awareness to problems that are being faced in the nursing profession. Organizations like The International Council of Nurses realize that nurses are front line with patients and understand that they are leaders in the medical field, they spend a vast amount of time at the bedside with abilities to collect real time data, they are educators as well as administrators. This gives nurses a lot of power and legislators look to nurses as leaders to help with policy. Being at the bedside gives the nurse the unique ability to report back to policy makers about what is working and what is not working in lieu of patient safety and patient centered care. “The International Council of Nurses is a federation of national nursing associations that works to enable nurses to speak with one voice so as to influence health policy and advance the profession of nursing” (Benton, 2012). Safe staffing, nursing workforce development (pushing nurses to obtain higher levels of education such as a BSN) and safe patient handling have been topics that the ANA has advocated for in the nursing arena as well as many more areas, these relate directly back to overall bettering the environment in order to create overall better patient outcomes.
The role of professional nursing organizations is huge in the development of nursing practice. It can be argued that without professional nursing organizations nursing would not be where it is now. It provided nurses with the ability to combine together and advocate for the right causes. It has made it possible for nursing to develop into one of the most trusted professions in the nation. For example, professional nursing organizations give nurses the resources they to engage in networking. Networking allows nurses to share valuable knowledge and skills. Without professional nursing organizations, nurses would not have such opportunities for networking, and that would severely stunt the growth of nursing (Goolsby & Knestrick, 2017). One nurse alone may not be enough to bring about a positive change. However, thousands of nurses can be quite the powerful political force. That makes it more likely for nurses to engage in advocacy and activism for the patients. That is why organizations such as the American Nurses Association have been involved with some of the most prominent legislations relating to the American healthcare system (Sepasi et al., 2017). In other cases, the professional organizations make it possible to prevent passage of harmful legislation. Either way, there can be little doubt that professional nursing organizations are a huge boon for nursing, especially in terms of advocacy and activism.
Sepasi, R. R., Borhani, F., & Abbaszadeh, A. (2017). Nurses’ perception of the strategies to gaining professional power: A qualitative study. Electronic Physician, 9(7), 4853–4861.
Goolsby, M. J., & Knestrick, J. M. (2017). Effective professional networking. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 29(8), 441–445.&
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