Respond to your colleagues’ posts by sharing your thoughts on their specialty, supporting their choice or offering suggestions if they have yet to choose. 

 At least 2 references in each peer responses! 

Nursing informatics is essential in enhancing the effectiveness of nursing. Using statistics one can narrow down potential causes error or find the effectiveness of a process. In any area of nursing having a greater understanding of what is occurring and the effectiveness will only be beneficial.

As a behavioral health nurse a common problem is the rate of readmission among the local homeless population. Having more comprehensive data on the population such as, where are they being discharged to or are these places successful at helping decrease the need for hospitalization could substantially decrease the rate of readmission. Though anecdotal in the single year of being a behavioral health nurse I have witnessed a substantial amount of patients come in for three or more stay because of acute psychosis because of a lack of treatment outside of the hospital.

Having data on what are the most beneficial places to discharges patients to may have multiple outcomes. Hospital outreach may expand to the effective place and create a stronger partnership. Successful places may have successful interventions the hospital may be able to learn from and apply to their own inpatient stays. Additionally with this information less successful facilities may adapt to be more like successful ones. In a study about readmission rates after being discharged to a respite care facility it was found that there was roughly a 50% decrease in readmission rates within 90 days of discharge (Kertesz et al., 2009). An additional study of young homeless populations was able to identify key factors in identifying likelihood of readmission (Mackelprang et al., 2015.) Knowing a person will likely have to be readmitted because of their drug abuse for example may help identify that the hospital should use additional resources to help decrease the likelihood of this.

The homeless population is among some of the most disenfranchised and are frequently undertreated for their ailments due to lack of resources. Having a greater understanding can only help in providing care and giving them the resources to succeed.