Building Nurse Leaders: Integrating Policy into Nursing Education

Making up over 80% of the global health workforce, nurses are essential for meeting public health goals like Healthy People 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite this, nurses remain underrepresented in leadership and policy development. The program was created to equip pre-licensure, master's entry into nursing students with foundational policy skills through a two-semester extracurricular enrichment program. It combines classroom learning with mentored policy projects, offering practical experience on key health policy issues like HIV prevention and end-of-life care. Early student feedback led to program adjustments, emphasizing peer learning. This paper describes the policy mentorship program and corresponding seminar. It provides a detailed description of the program so that other nursing schools can adopt components or design similar programs to help students hone the critical competencies required to navigate the sociopolitical systems that define our healthcare approach and mediate disease and wellness.