Date of Graduation

Fall 12-13-2019

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

College/School

School of Nursing and Health Professions

Department/Program

Nursing

Program

Executive Leader DNP

First Advisor

Dr. KT Waxman

Second Advisor

Dr. Cynthia Shum

Abstract

At present, professional nursing does not benefit from strong policy development and advocacy influence in the United States. This project focused on CA nursing policy development and advocacy influence deficit among new members of a statewide professional nursing association. There are nearly 457,000 licensed registered nurses (RNs) in CA (BRN, 2019) and around 3.8 million RNs in the United States (AACN, 2019) making CA RNs twelve percent of the national nursing workforce. Yet only five percent of RNs serve on hospital boards, and legislative efforts to advance important nursing issues such as full practice authority for advanced practice RNs in CA fail year after year (CNMA, 2018). Although nursing is ranked as the most trusted and ethical profession for the past seventeen years per Gallup (2018) and enjoys a prestigious and respected place in the U.S. society, its collective professional voice is not being heard by legislators or decision-makers. The premise of this Doctor of Nursing Practice evidence-based project lied in a three-pronged approach. The first part included the creation of an online public policy and advocacy toolkit. The second part consisted of toolkit distribution to a pilot project group. The third part consisted of collecting and evaluating data gathered through a) pre-intervention and b) post-intervention surveys. Results showed that the online policy toolkit notably increased new members’ knowledge and confidence in nurses’ role in policy development and advocacy and surpassed its 20% aim. The duration of this project was nine months beginning in January 2019. This report described population selection, policy toolkit and intervention steps, barriers to implementation, evidence gathering, outcomes evaluation, interpretations, and future recommendations.

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