This book is part of the Transforming Nursing Practice series, written specifically to support nursing students on the new degree programme. Health policy can appear complex and remote from nursing practice. This book demystifies health policy and helps you understand how policy decisions relate to your daily practice. Through the exploration of selected hot topics, such as patient involvement and dignity, the book helps you to consider how not only to use policy in practice, but also how to use practice to influence policy. Patient narratives and case studies are followed through each chapter to show how policy issues can impact on real life care. The book also shows how you can use an understanding of policy to develop your career. Key Features: - Shows how policy impacts on the real world and how you can use it to improve care or change practice - Regular activities help you to engage with policy issues - Enables you to see how to use policy in practice yourself - Supports you in meeting the NMC requirements for registration About the series Transforming Nursing Practice is the first series of books designed to help students meet the requirements of the NMC Standards and Essential Skills Clusters for the new degree programmes. Each book addresses a core topic, and together they cover the generic knowledge required for all fields of practice. Accessible and challenging, Transforming Nursing Practice helps nursing students prepare for the demands of future healthcare delivery. Series editor: Proffesor Shirley Bach, Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Brighton. Co-series editor for learning skills titles: Dr Mooi Standing, Independent Academic Consultant at national and international level, and an accredited Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) reviewer. Georgina Taylor was a Principal Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Sciences at Middlesex University for many years, and has recently retired. She taught research methods to a range of healthcare professionals and aspects of health policy and interprofessional working to third year nursing students. Research interests include the health of refugees and asylum seekers, health inequalities, intercultural care, and patient safety.