Bio
Amy W. Smith, DNP, FNP-BC, CENP, FAANP, FACHE
Dr. Amy Smith, DNP, FNP-BC, CENP, FAANP, FACHE has over 25 years of experience as a Family Nurse Practitioner and Health Care Executive. After graduating with her BSN from UMMC School of Nursing, Dr. Smith started her career as a registered nurse in Med-Surg, Oncology, and ICU before becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner in 1994- as part of UMMC’s first NP class. Since that time, she has practiced as a Family Nurse Practitioner across a variety of settings and specialties including rural health clinics in the Mississippi delta, Emergency Departments, Urgent Care Clinics, Inpatient Hospitalist teams, and Primary Care clinics. Dr. Smith earned a doctorate degree in nursing practice from Rush University in 2008, focused on healthcare leadership and business. Dr. Smith has provided leadership in private sector and governmental health care organizations at the local, regional, and national levels. She has also served as adjunct/affiliate faculty for the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing for many years prior to joining as part-time faculty teaching health policy for inter-professional doctoral students. It is her goal to invest in the next generation of Nurses and other Healthcare Leaders to promote improvements in heathcare for the nation and beyond.
Active in many professional and community organizations, Smith is board certified as health care executive and as a nurse practitioner and nurse executive. She is a Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and of the American College of Health Care Executives. She is active in the community serving as Girl Scout leader for many years as well as volunteering for other organizations which help those in need.
Dr. Smith is a strong proponent of evidence-based practice and has significant experience translating research into practice by leading change. She is recognized nationally as a transformational leader and continues to lead change across the nation improving health outcomes for millions of patients.
Dr. Smith has multiple publications and speaks regularly at the national, state, and regional levels. She has conducted research and evaluation for federally funded projects and organizations. Dr. Smith holds special interest in population health and health equality and leads national transformations in these arenas. She values team-based healthcare and believes that each discipline uniquely contributes to best practice. Dr. Smith has devoted her career to leading change at the local, regional, and national levels so that all members of the health care team can strive for excellence in healthcare.
Nurse Executive/Legislator Interview
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations
Nurse Executive/Legislator Interview
The ability to influence policy is one of the core competencies that doctorally-prepared nurses should possess. Some of the avenues that exist for doctorally-prepared nurses to shape health policy include getting involved in professional organizations, participating in research-based endeavors, and holding management positions in the workplace and higher education institutions (Burke, 2016). One can gain insights related to the role of a DNP graduate in shaping health policy by interviewing doctorally-prepared nurses who hold local, national, and international positions that involve extensive health policy influences. The purpose of this reflective essay is to summarize important points that emerged from an interview with Dr. Amy W. Smith, a DNP nurse with over 25 years of experience as a Family Nurse Practitioner and Health Care Executive.
DNP graduates get involved in health and social policy activities in various ways. These activities directly contribute to an improvement in patient outcomes. For example, by assuming management roles, DNP graduates utilize their positions to defend health policies that impact patient care at the organizational, national, and international levels. Additionally, DNP graduates who hold faculty positions utilize those opportunities to equip healthcare professionals with the knowledge and skills that they can apply to develop, implement and shape health policy (Bekemeier et al., 2021). For example, during the interview, Dr. Smith indicated that her passion for Veterans and health care led her to become involved in health and social policy activities. Over the years in her career, she has progressed to take on additional responsibility at each level of management at the local, regional, and national levels where she became involved in health and social policy. Another way that she has been involved in health and social policy activities is by teaching Health Policy for inter-professional doctoral students including Nursing, Medical, and Health Professions students. Dr. Smith led the efforts for implementing the Patient-Centered Medical Home across the Mid-South Region of the nation for the Veterans Health Administration.
The nursing profession plays an essential role in advocacy as well as in influencing and shaping health and social politics. Milstead and Short (2019) portray the nursing profession as that which should encourage political involvement with the aim of improving health policy. In a number of instances, nurse managers have worked with political leaders to influence health policy reforms in their wards and communities (Kodama & Fukahori, 2017). From the interview, Dr. Smith admits that nursing is ideally suited to advocate, influence, and shape health and social politics and that it is the duty and obligation of nurses to do so on behalf of the patients and communities that they serve.
Doctorally-prepared nurses have an important role to play in advocacy and influencing and shaping health and social policy. DNP Essential V emphasizes the need for DNP graduates to engage in the process of health policy development and assume leadership roles that focus on improving health systems through policy (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2006). Through health policy influence, DNP graduates shape healthcare delivery issues including healthcare quality, patient safety, access to care, health disparities, and social justice among other issues. Dr. Smith has emphasized that the DNP has a role to play in identifying policy issues of relevance to their clinical practice, workplace, and community. They are educated to analyze policy environments and policy issues so that they can define policy problems, identify potential issues, critique potential solutions, and assess political influences (Milstead & Short, 2019). She further indicates that DNPs have policy competence as they are prepared as nursing leaders to analyze and influence health policy environments.
Professional nursing organizations encourage nurses to actively participate in health policy formulation, policy implementation, and social change. Examples of such organizations are the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the National League for Nursing that require nurses to constantly address health policy as part of their professional role (Burke, 2016). Dr. Smith recommends that DNPs should become involved in their professional organizations including state licensing boards, the community, and political landscape whether at the local, state, and/or national levels. Dr. Smith believes that participating in policy development through professional organizations is important because it provides DNPs with an opportunity to influence and shape health and social policies.
In summary, as the complexities of healthcare organizations and nursing care continue to rise, DNPs will continue to have an impact on the future of health care through their role in advocacy and health and social policy activities. Rising healthcare costs, technological advancements, and the expanding size of the elderly populations among other issues call for the need to formulate new policies that will drive positive reforms and improvements in the healthcare delivery processes. Due to their advanced knowledge and skills, DNP-prepared nurses are better positioned to influence health policy in the future. Dr. Smith has acknowledged that there is a myriad of important health and societal issues that DNPs can influence as healthcare leaders.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2006). The essentials of doctoral education for advanced nursing practice. https://www.pncb.org/sites/default/files/2017-02/Essentials_of_DNP_Education.pdf
Bekemeier, B., Kuehnert, P., Zahner, S. J., Johnson, K. H., Kaneshiro, J., & Swider, S. M. (2021). A critical gap: Advanced practice nurses focused on the public’s health. Nursing Outlook, 69(5), 865–874. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2021.03.023
Burke, S. (2016). Influence through policy: Nurses have a unique role. https://nursingcentered.sigmanursing.org/commentary/more-commentary/Vol42_2_nurses-have-a-unique-role
Kodama, Y., & Fukahori, H. (2017). Nurse managers’ attributes to promote change in their wards: A qualitative study. NursingOpen, 4(4), 209-217. doi: 10.1002/nop2.87
Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: A nurse’s guide (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.