POLICY MATTERS - CRITICAL POLICY ANALYSIS AND NURSING

Policy is an integral part of nursing. At the organisational level, po licies are constantly developed in a seemingly endless quest to provid e more effective and efficient nursing services and outcomes. Such an increasing generation of policy appears to rest on the taken-for-grant ed assumption by nurses that policy is essential for good nursing prac tice. However, is it necessarily the case that the generation of polic y documents advances the practice of nursing? Rather, does the apparen t uncritical adoption of the role of policy by nurses actually serve t o further regulate, control, and even limit the practice of nursing? T his paper uses a critical perspective to explore nursing policy, In so doing it exposes the effect of policy on the construction and mainten ance of everyday understandings of nursing practice.