How Advanced Professional Nurses Apply Evidence-Based Strategies to Promote Interprofessional Collaboration within an Advocacy Action Team (AAT)

Evidence-based practice in nursing is a problem-solving approach meant to deliver healthcare incorporating the most sustainable evidence, patient preferences and values and healthcare professionals’ expertise. Through evidence-based practice, interprofessional collaboration within an advocacy action team is optimized since members work towards solving complex healthcare problems with each contributing knowledge to solve the issue at hand. Undoubtedly, one of the evidence-based strategies APRNs apply to promote collaboration within an advocacy action team is identifying the best educational materials, digital decision support, and performance feedback to provide the most sustainable evidence. For instance, APRNs can identify information from peer-reviewed journals like PubMed, EBSCO, and The Cochrane Collaboration (Newhouse & Spring, 2010). Comparatively, the other strategy evidence-based strategy applies to promote interprofessional collaboration within an AAT is by acting as change agents where they act as mentors in the team and guide the team through the 5 EBP steps, asking a question, finding evidence, critically appraising the evidence, integrating it into practice, and evaluating its effectiveness. By acting as change agents, they persuade the team about the significance of interprofessional collaboration using clinical expertise and research.

Health Issue Affecting an At-Risk Population: Teen Births in Florida

Teenage pregnancy is associated with social, economic, and political disparities in the society are have adverse impacts on the mother’s education since majority drop out of high school and end up unemployed. According to the Florida (2020), teenage pregnancies are more prevalent among teens in foster care, American Indian/Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander females compared to non-Hispanic whites, teens in low-income families, and those living in rural areas. Moreover, according to the Florida (2020), even though teen pregnancies in the state of Florida have depreciated by 76% between 1991 and 2020, there were 9,541 teen births in 2020 representing 16.2% of the population. Out of this, 1% were girls aged below 15, 22% were between 15 and 17 years, and 77% were aged between 18 to 19 years.

Characteristics of the At-Risk Population Matters Teenage Births

Johal and Bhatti (2013) studied 11,464 white and black pregnant teenagers and 28,500 pregnant adults and identified that teenage mothers are of small weight and stature leading to small infant sizes. Equally important, the progeny of teen mothers indicates a higher rate of prematurity and minimal birth size. Equally important, teen mothers have high chances of dropping out of school and usually require assistance raising their children due to unemployment. Generally, their children are at risk of poor birth outcomes as well as developmental challenges making the population to be considered at-risk. Further, teen births tend to have poor health and are at greater risk of having low birth weight, being stillbirth, as well as neonatal death. As already identified above, teenage pregnancy is also associated with social, economic, and political disparities in the societies are have adverse impacts on the mother’s education since majority drop out of high school and end up unemployed.