title: Advanced practice nursing: shaping health through policy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To highlight the importance of advanced practice nurses (APNs) becoming politically engaged as key to promoting the healthcare interests of patients, communities and the profession and to offer specific strategies on how to become politically competent.
  
  
  METHODS
  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CINAHL, PubMed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  APNs must come to see political engagement as a professional obligation and health policy as something that they can shape rather than something that happens to them.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The overall goal of healthcare reform is the provision of quality, safe and cost-effective healthcare for all Americans. APNs are graduate prepared clinicians that focus on health and illness management and are strategically positioned to lead the way in shaping and implementing health policy priorities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery, School of Medicine, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri.
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Kostas-Polston
authors.forename: Joanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thanavaro
authors.forename: Cathy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Arvidson
authors.forename: Leslie-Faith Morritt
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Taub
mesh_terms: D057179:Advanced Practice Nursing / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D009722:Nurse Practitioners / Q000458:organization & administration; D011050:Policy Making; D017009:Professional Autonomy
keywords: Advanced practice nurse (APN); health policy; leadership; legislation