response to the post below: 

Much like policy making, where nurses get involved in policy evaluation depends on what well they want to get involved in.   A nurse can get involved with policy creation at their hospital, on their unit, or they can sit on a federal committee that reviews policy.    The level of involvement is completely dependent on the nurse. 

One of the best ways to start getting involve in policy evaluation is to get with a group that is already doing that and learning from them.   The American Nurse Association is already heavy involved in the pollical process from lobbying to evaluation and recommendations.   They are an excellent place to start.  

While it is well established that nurse involvement in policy making is an overall good thing there are still many barriers that prevent nurses from getting involved.   Some of the factors are self-imposed like lack of time and willingness to commit to things outside of job.   Others are external factors like lack of structure for participation, or policy’s makers not wanting nursing involved meant.   Sometimes the biggest fight is getting a seat at the table.  

As a nurse you can get involved with the political debate about why a policy is good, or not, but as nurses we do our best work on the ground.   The CDC has formal processes on how policy should be evaluated.  Federal healthcare policies were first mandated through the National Performance Review and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993.    The program set a formal framework to review and evaluate federal policy.    The nurse can place an important role on collecting the ground data that is needed to evaluate the success or failure of a program.