© The Author(s) 2010

The tumultuous changes in health care... provide mul-tiple lessons in the political forces that shape health care policy in the public and private sectors. They also illus-trate how nursing is one of those forces. Whether nurs-ing will be a force in the future depends on how well nurses understand the policy process and its political dynamics, and how engaged we are in the process. (Leavitt & Mason, 1998, p. 3) The nursing profession’s need to control the scope of its prac-tice and future underlies the dynamics of policy and politics in healthcare. Early efforts to secure control of nursing practice trace back to 1873, where the trained nurse was prepared. By the turn of the 20th century, activist nurses started professional organizations, lobbied for nurse registration laws, connected our professional associations to the woman suffrage move