Advocating for Policy Change to Improve Health Outcomes in the Community

 There are many differences in the work of the advanced professional nurse advocating for an at- risk population versus advocating for a specific patient in the clinical practice setting. One difference is strategy. Advocating for a policy change involves planning, collaboration, and understanding of current state and local laws and can become political. Understanding how the legislature works and how policies are made or changed is something the advanced professional nurse would need to understand fully to advocate for an at-risk population. In this situation the nurse is advocating for change on multiple levels. The strategy used to successfully debate with political groups or lawmakers differs from the strategy the advanced professional nurse may use to advocate for one specific patient in a clinical setting.[ CITATION JoA \l 1033 ] The second difference is in the group size of the target audience. The advanced professional nurse advocating for a population group takes much different work than advocating for one singular patient in the clinical setting. The advanced professional nurse is essentially advocating for hundreds or thousands of people versus advocating for one patient. Some of the work may be similar such as persistence, knowledge of the direct issue at hand, and developing a full plan on how to address the issue to achieve a better outcome. Although passion, persistence, and critical thinking may be utilized in both scenarios. Two major differences in how an advanced professional nurse advocates for an at-risk population versus how the nurse advocates for an individual patient are strategy taken to advocate and the overall group size in focus.[ CITATION JoA \l 1033 ] Two strategies the advanced professional use may use to promote interprofessional collaboration with an Advocacy Action Team (AAT) are multi-level communication and relationship building. Multi-level communication would be used to set clear expectations, boundaries, and goals with