Monica Tubbesing EDUC 5353 Week 1 Defining the Digital Divide Blog initial post.

 

Defining the Digital Divide

Introduction:

I am a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner getting ready for the Nurse Educator Certification board exam. A Nurse Practitioner is a registered nurse that provides direct patient care and prescribes medications for acute or chronic conditions (American Nurses Association, 2024). I am an independent contractor and do telehealth psychiatric consultations for rural hospitals in one of my jobs and do part time inpatient detox center coverage at my soon-to-end other job. In the future I would like to teach nursing students. Currently I consider myself an educator because I love to educate my patients about their medical and mental conditions. I like people to make educated decisions regarding their care.

Community I work with:

I am a psychiatric consultant for hospitalized patients in the rural hospitals of Anadarko, Fairfax, and Stroud Oklahoma. I help them go back to their community. These patients use the critical access hospitals found in these three small cities. Critical access hospitals are those located more than 35-miles from the nearest hospital, have a maximum of twenty-five beds, keep acute inpatient care for less than 96 hours, and provide 24/7 emergency care services (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, 2024).

These patients and their families will benefit from having mental health appointments follow up appointments via telehealth after their stay in the hospital. Follow up visits may be hybrid, online, or in person visits. Telehealth services now includes social worker visits who may be able to find resources/benefits for the patient and their families (Gilson, Steward, & Hodgson, 2024).

 A recent study involving hybrid visits showed improved long-term outcomes and online visits improve initiation and early retention of patients using the medication buprenorphine to keep sobriety (Faysal, at el., 2025). Not only is buprenorphine medication important, but any medication for any mental condition, will be important to take to keep balanced and prevent hospitalizations or suicide.

The most important action will be to educate the patient to follow up appointments with a psychiatrist after discharge. Second most important action will be to have the appointment scheduled. Third, most important, and a potential project for next semester, will be to find online resources for those that cannot attend in person. A study conducted among rural hospitals demonstrated that telehealth helps with suicide prevention along with follow up appointment scheduling in small hospitals with online psychiatric providers (Doupnik et al. 2025).

Basic demographics:

Regarding reported income in the three towns, I used the link our instructor provided in the class. I took the information provided at Income by zip code (2024) and organized into an income table looks as follows:

Town	Anadarko	Fairfax	Stroud
Zip code	73005	74637	74079
Median household income	55,938	39,063	54,519
Average household income	54,441	61,526	71,514
Per capital income	2,630	25,092	29,318
High income households	1.4%	6.0%	4.2%

 

Politically, the state of Oklahoma has a Republican trifecta and Republican triplex, in other words the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature are Republicans (Ballotpedia, 2026).

For history:

Anadarko origins date back to 1878 as a place for the Federal government affairs establishing the boundaries of the town. Then in 1901 a land lottery bill with sixty-three lots sold at an auction designed as a town, and the formation of a government was adopted in 1947 (City of Anadarko, n.d.).

Fairfax origins date back to 1903 with the building of a railway and merchants realizing the advantages of the railroad. Lew A. Wismeyer, known as the father of Fairfax, disliked “Coda” station as a name and proposed to switch it to “Fairfax.” Fairfax become a permanent community through a townsite bill in 1904 (Oklahoma historical society, n.d.).

Stroud origins date back to 1892 when James W. Stroud opened a wagon load of goods, leading to a building of a post office, other business and school building that served as a church building. The designation from town into city happened in 1920 (City of Stroud, n.d.).

 

 

References

American Nurses Association (2024). ANA Nursing Resources Hub. What is a Nurse Practitioner? https://www.nursingworld.org/content-hub/resources/becoming-a-nurse/what-is-nurse-practitioner/

Ballotpedia. (2026). Party control of Oklahoma state government. https://ballotpedia.org/Party_control_of_Oklahoma_state_government

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (2024). Critical Access Hospitals. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/health-safety-standards/certification-compliance/critical-access-hospitals

City of Anadarko Oklahoma. (n.d.). About Anadarko. https://www.cityofanadarko.org/residents/about_anadarko/index.php

City of Stroud (n.d.). History of Stroud. https://cityofstroud.com/history-of-stroud/

Doupnik, S. K., Bowden, C. F., Worsley, D., Keating, C., Foster, A. A., Quarshie, W., Min, J., Schilz, P., Tani, O. J., Meise, Z., & Marcus S. C. (2025). Impact of telemental health on suicide prevention care in U.S. emergency departments. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/acem.70055

Faysal, Jabel A., Noor-E-Alam, Young, G. J., Yaseliani, M., & Goodin, A. J. (2025). Impact of telehealth, in-person, and hybrid care modalities on buprenorphine discontinuation among patients with opioid use disorder: A retrospective cohort study on commercially insured individuals. J Subst Use Addict Treat. 176:209749. doi: 10.1016/j.josat.2025.209749.

Gilson, T., Stewart, C., & Hodgson, D. (2024). Telehealth in Mental Health Social Work: Benefits and Limitations within Practice. Australian Social Work, 78:3, 261-273, doi: 10.1080/0312407X.2024.2380350

Income by zip code. (2024). Oklahoma Income Statistics for 2024. https://www.incomebyzipcode.com/oklahoma

Oklahoma Historical Society. (n.d.). The encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Fairfax. ttps://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=FA004