NURS 6101-23: Policy and Politics in Nursing and Healthcare
March 7th, 2012

Issues that affect health care delivery
When I hear the term “health care industry”, I imagine a system where there is access to diagnosis and care 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all in need, from birth to death. According to Knickman and Kovner (2011), good health care is an essential foundation for being able to function in society and to enjoy life. People view health care quite differently depending on whether they are sick or well or whether they have adequate health insurance or not. The purpose of this paper is to locate an article within the past six months in a newspaper or current journal such as the Wall Street journal and summarize a …show more content…

This makes these investments difficult for politicians who are eager to show results while they are in office.
In what ways does this issue affect how I do my job? I work as a Registered Nurse in a Behavior Health department and over the years I have seen an increase in the number of inpatients that are admitted to our 96 bed department that smoke. Approximately 90% of our inpatients are smokers. Having a diagnosis like mental illness combined with increase in smoking often will trigger within the patient heightened feelings of anxiety and depression. Suicidal ideation can occur, leading to attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to commit suicide. The medical complications induced by smoking in addition to other present illnesses, also leads to drug and alcohol use, which can worsen the condition of mental illness.
What challenges and opportunities does the issue present?
The primary challenge is the achievement of a balance between political self interest and the needs of the people. Since the benefits of anti smoking campaigns are fairly well known, this is also an opportunity for civil leaders to make the necessary investments in smoking interventions, while pointing to the benefits based upon a rich store of well established data by groups such as the CDC and The Tobacco Settlement of the late 1990s, presents an opportunity for States that have not