Teenage pregnancy

The high rate of adolescent pregnancies and births in the United States has had an extensive impact on individual, family, community, and national issues related to health and economics. Teenagers, many of whom are already of lower socioeconomic status, are at risk for preterm birth and low birth weight, as well as incomplete use of available services. This inquiry used a retrospective comparative research design to evaluate the effectiveness of Project Teen in Palm Beach County, Florida. Project Teen is a multidisciplinary program offering a continuum of support services to pregnant adolescents and newly parenting adolescents and their infants until the infants are 2 years old. Through frequent contacts, home visitation, resource referral, counseling, and education the health care professionals collaborate with the clients to facilitate clients' choices which will maximize families' health potential. Home visitation by care coordinators and senior community health nurses was positively related to pregnancy, family health, and family socioeconomic outcomes.

The problem of the study was to understand the experience of being cared for by a nurse during labor and delivery. The review of literature for the study examined research focusing on adolescents in labor and delivery, caring and adolescent pregnancy and caring from current nursing literature perspective. Recalled labor and delivery experiences were analyzed phenomenologically in order to extract the meaning of the experience. Five recently delivered primiparous mothers were interviewed. Interviews followed guidelines designed to elicit descriptions of nurse caring. Interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. Data were reduced through a search for themes, and analyzed using guidelines of Colaizzi (1978). The findings were discussed with four of the participants and they all agreed that their perceptions of the experience had been described. Results of the study produced an exhaustive description and fundamental structure of nurse caring.

One out of every ten women aged 15-19 in the United States becomes pregnant each year, yet few studies have been conducted to determine what is important to the teenage mother. The purpose of this study is to develop a structural description of the lived experience of being a teenage mother. Six teenage mothers who attended a teen parent program in a local high school were interviewed. Using Giorgi's method of interpretation for phenomenological studies, a general description of the lived experience of being a teenage mother was developed. Actual quotations from the interviews are utilized to illustrate the themes which emerged and possible resolutions and implications for further nursing research discussed.