NR 506 Discuss the best approach for meeting and communicating with your selected elected official for your healthcare concern
Discuss the best approach for meeting and communicating with your selected elected official for your healthcare concern. What is your rationale for this approach?
Approach for Meeting and Communicating With The Official
Policy advocacy has several steps, with each step having unique challenges and potential solutions. The steps should effectively be completed so that the proposed policy change is embraced and effected. Besides, a policy change needs the backing of elected officials and opinion leaders that can effectively influence the legislative processes and bring the policy changes into fruition (Kalaitzidis & Jewell, 2020). Usually, it is part of best practice to meet the elected official and express the concern and the importance of introducing a new health policy or modifying an existing one to help in addressing a specific healthcare issue.
In the past weeks, this research has been looking into child abuse and neglect as a problem that needs to be sorted. Having identified the current policy in place for protecting children against abuse and neglect and a critical review done, it was noted that the policy falls short in a few areas. For instance, the act neglected the role of community empowerment through education to address the issue of child abuse and neglect. A policy adjustment change has therefore been proposed to include community education in the act to make it stronger. With the elected official having been identified as Schrier Kim, the next step is to discuss the best approach for meeting and communicating with her.
Approach For Meeting The Official
There is a plan to meet Schrier Kim. Kim is the elected representative for Washington District, in due course. It is
therefore prudent to evaluate the best approach for meeting and communicating with her regarding a policy adjustment change to include community education in Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to make it stronger. Arranging for a meeting with elected officials should follow some protocol since elected officials are usually very busy and therefore have their itineraries. The starting point is to write an email to the office as it is among the easiest ways to catch the attention of the official. Besides, their email addresses are usually easier to get since they can be traced from the official website. A phone call can then be done as a follow-up to ensure that the official got has the knowledge and information that I would like to meet her over a policy issue.
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Rationale For The Choice
The pre-meeting strategies of getting attention then pave the way for face-to-face or one on one meetings. The meeting approach chosen to meet Representative Schrier Kim is therefore face to face meeting. Face to face meeting is one of the best approaches as it has been considered and widely regarded as the most effective strategy (Taylor, 2016). When the meeting finally takes place, I am planning to officially introduce myself to Representative Schrier Kim and briefly but concisely present my concern. By putting the facts collected through my research on the table, I will then be able to present to the leader my personal experience and then present my proposal.
From the experience and learning I have already obtained, I will make sure that my meeting with Representative Schrier Kim is brief and to the point, since it has already been stated earlier, there are time constraints (Mason et al., 2020) since the elected officials are usually busy and have a lot of businesses to attend. Having been part of the team that sponsored the Stronger Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act for the year 2019-2020, communicating with Schrier Kim will be made a bit easier. She is knowledgeable about children’s health since she is also a former physician. I am therefore planning to educate her more on my findings and stress the importance of including education to the community as part of the policy she proposed.
Conclusion
Meeting and communicating with an elected official is an important step in ensuring that a policy proposal change gets enough backing of the influential individuals hence higher chances of the proposal being implemented. Using a face-to-face meeting has a greater impact in making the official buy into the proposal.
References
Kalaitzidis, E., & Jewell, P. (2020). The concept of advocacy in nursing: a critical analysis. The health care manager, 39(2), 77-84. Doi: 10.1097/HCM.0000000000000292
Mason, D. J., Gardner, D. B., Outlaw, F. H., & O’Grady, E. T. (2020). Policy & Politics in Nursing and Health Care-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Taylor, M. R. (2016). Impact of advocacy initiatives on nurses’ motivation to sustain momentum in public policy advocacy. Journal of professional nursing, 32(3), 235-245. Doi: 10.1016/j.profnurs.2015.10.010
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In the process of this weeks assignment I found myself interested in the political aspect that’s involved in the medical field. It put me in a mindset that I could see myself become involved in the political arena of healthcare, advocating for the patient population that I serve in the community. I work in an area were opined abuse is very prominent, and healthcare disparities have a huge influence on the crisis. Did anyone address this in their assignment?
Thank you for your post, I look forward to reading more about your topic on violence towards healthcare worker, and possibly ways to prevent it. I do wonder if 96% of the abuse that goes unreported is due to workers feeling that our patients are not intentionally being abusive, such as when they are cognitively compromised and do not know what they are doing? I do agree that we should not tolerate oriented family members being aggressive towards us; however, I feel that we are in a customer service field and even if we have strangers screaming at us, we would still have to put a smile on our face. What type of policy would you want to implement concerning this topic?
Three methods of violence prevention in hospitals: 1. Conduct de-escalation training, 2. Create a workplace violence prevention plan, 3. Enforce a zero-tolerance policy.
Reference
Patient Safety Monitor Journal (2017). Three keys to preventing workplace violence. Jul2017; 18(7): 12-14. 3p. (Article) ISSN: 2157-5630, Database: CINAHL Complete.