Political participation of nurses

Abstract

Background. The study of nursing political participation is important because nurses need to develop skills required to move nursing's political agenda's forward. Nursing is 2.9 million strong but lacks the voice to take charge of its destiny. Nursing has the potential to be a powerful force in setting the agenda for health care reform. The purpose for this study was to evaluate political participation of nurses across all levels of education, to determine how nurses define political participation, identify the factors that motivate/hinder activity, and establish the stage of political development for the sample. Methods. The study utilized a cross sectional mail survey design to measure political participation at the individual nurse's level. The sample was surveyed utilizing the 2004 modification of Hanley's (1983, 1987) Political Participation tool. Open-ended questions were added to the survey to obtain the meaning of political action, note the prompts for action, and if not active to suggest what could be done to increase participation. Through analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative data, the researcher was able to evaluate the sample's level of political development as identified by Cohen et al. (1996). Findings. Nurses possessing advanced degrees were more politically active with respect to campaigning activities. Participatory, involved, informed, voting and effecting changes were the major themes derived from the qualitative data. Multiple linear regression was utilized to identify factors contributing to political activity. Organizational membership, age, political attitudes, and family background variables were found to be significantly and independently associated with nurses' political activity. Analysis of the sample's stage of political development demonstrated that the sample is in the initial stages of political development. Conclusions. This study explored political participation of nurses across all levels of education with the hopes of identifying factors impacting participation in order to establish where efforts should be made in nursing education to help nurses find their voice in the political arena. Nurses in the study identified the need to be taught the political process but stressed the need to have the information incorporated into courses or brought to them due to the constraints on their time.