An Assessment of the Credibility and Relevance of the Sources NHS FPX 4000 Assessment 3 Healthcare Disparities

Healthcare disparities, known to be differences that exist in access to healthcare services and health outcomes, have been known for a long time to lead to unfair or unequal health experiences and outcomes for particular populations. The implication is that healthcare professionals such as nurses need to formulate appropriate and effective strategies that can be used to deal with such healthcare disparities. One such disparity is the inadequate access to necessary care services due to geographical location as some people are remotely located and would need several hours drive to access appropriate care (Cyr et al.,2019).  The professional relevance of this topic is that nursing interventions can be used to improve access to care for such patients. As part of my professional experience, there have been cases where patients fail to access the required care in time, which ends up endangering their lives and leading to poor health outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to formulate an annotated bibliography of articles relevant to the identified issue.

Identification of Academic Peer-Review Journals

            A comprehensive search was conducted across the Capella University library’s database. The main databases used were PubMed Central, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. Various keywords were used, including “ disparity in care access” and “solutions.” “Telehealth”. The results were then limited to peer-reviewed journals published in the last five years.

            It is important to assess the credibility and relevance of the sources to be used in exploring the identified issue. Therefore, various strategies were used. For credibility, only articles published in the last five years were included. In addition, it was ensured that the authors are individuals who are knowledgeable in that particular area of knowledge. It was also important to check the relevance of the sources; therefore, the information contained in the articles was checked to ensure that they addressed the key area of inadequate access to healthcare due to geographical location.

The Annotated Bibliography

Lum, H. D., Nearing, K., Pimentel, C. B., Levy, C. R., & Hung, W. W. (2020). Anywhere to anywhere: use of telehealth to increase health care access for older, rural veterans. Public Policy & Aging Report, 30(1), 12–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/prz030

            The article by Lum et al. (2020) focused on telehealth as a solution to poor access to health care. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to explore the telehealth approaches by the Veteran Health Administration that can be used to enhance geriatric care access for aging veterans and family caregivers living in rural areas. This research was informed by the fact that older individuals living in the rural areas usually exhibit more medical problems than those living in the urban areas. They also experience several chronic conditions. This article was included as part of the bibliography since it is a peer-reviewed source and offers various telehealth solutions used to increase healthcare access to those living in rural areas to reduce disparities. The researchers discussed various telehealth solutions, such as remote patient monitoring, where simple technology is applied to monitor patients’ health data. The other aspect is the use of store-and-forward telehealth, entailing asynchronous approaches where patients record videos, sounds, and images and send them to health experts to make clinical decisions. The other telehealth modality is the use of clinical video telehealth, which entails synchronous real-time visits between healthcare professionals and patients through communication links.

Myers, C. R. (2019). Using telehealth to remediate rural mental health and healthcare disparities. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 40(3), 233–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2018.1499157

            The article by Myers (2019) is another source that addresses how telehealth can be used to solve rural mental health and healthcare disparities. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to explore the use of telehealth to reduce healthcare access disparities among individuals with mental health concerns in rural areas. The researchers indicated that the telehealth approach is a viable option that can be used to ad