POLITICS IN NURSING: AN ESSENTIAL LEARNING FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

Abstract

In Canada, as elsewhere, nurses must face many challenges if they want to participate as an influential group within health care organizations, but there are some facilitators; among them are the ability to analyze the context, issues and the right course of actions from a political perspective. This article shares the learning outcomes of postgraduate students during a seminar on policies related to nursing services administration at Université Laval, Québec, Canada. The aim of this article is to present the learning achieved from themes and issues discussed in the seminar and introduce tools for political analysis that are useful to draw the current state of nursing in the healthcare system. At the end of the seminar, the learning achieved allowed students to comprehend different elements that must be taken into account to assess the current situation concerning important issues for the nursing profession and consider courses of action to influence their evolution.

Keywords

• Health Postgraduate Programs
• Nursing
• Politics