Background Patient access to health information using electronic patient portals is increasingly common. Portal use has the potential to improve patients’ engagement with their health and is particularly important for patients with chronic illness; however, patients’ abilities, attitudes, and use of portals are poorly understood. Methods A single-center, cross-sectional survey was conducted of 240 consecutive pre- and post-kidney transplant patients of all levels of technological proficiency who presented to an urban transplant center in the United States. The investigator-developed Patient Information and Technology Assessment-Patient Portal was used to assess patients’ attitudes towards the use of patient portals. Results Most patients surveyed did not use the patient portal (n = 176, 73%). Patients were more likely to use the patient portal if they were White, highly educated, in the post-transplant period, more comfortable with technology, and reported being a frequent internet user (P < .05). The most common reasons for not using the patient portal included: (1) preference for traditional communication, (2) not being aware of the portal, (3) low technological proficiency, and (4) poor interoperability between the portal at the transplant center and the patient’s primary care center. Conclusions We identified several modifiable barriers to patient portal use. Some barriers can be addressed by patient education and training on portal use, and federal initiatives are underway to improve interoperability; however, a preference for traditional communications represents the most prominent barrier. Additional strategies are needed to improve portal adoption by encouraging acceptance of technologies as a way of clinical communication.

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BackgroundAs health-related communications become digitized, strategies to increase adoption of these Web-based platforms are needed. The purpose of this study was to assess facilitators and barriers to in-home Internet use among prekidney and postkidney transplant patients.MethodsA single center, cross-sectional survey of 240 consecutive patients of all levels of technological proficiency who presented to an urban transplant center in the United States. The Patient Information and Technology Assessment consists of 6 demographic questions, 3 disease-related questions, and 8 technology-related questions.ResultsMuch of the sample was African American, male with a mean age of 51 years, and median income of $53 800/year. Logistic regression analysis was undertaken, and after adjusting for covariates, we found Smartphone ownership (odds ratio [OR], 4.94; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.32-10.52), a higher number of Internet users in the home (OR, 2.00; 95% CI, 1.11-3.62), and having college education and beyond (OR, 4.88; 95% CI, 2.03-11.74) increased the likelihood of being a frequent Internet user. African American or Hispanic/Latino patients were less likely to be frequent Internet users compared with white patients (OR, 0.26 and 0.24, respectively, compared with whites, all P < 0.05). As the total number of people in the household increased, frequent Internet use decreased (OR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.29-0.92). As age increased, reports of frequent Internet use decreased.ConclusionsLower rates of Internet use among African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos in urban areas in the United States remains a problem despite a significant increase in access to the Internet and Smartphone ownership. The finding that Internet use increases as the number of Internet users in the household increases indicates that leveraging the patient’s social support network and/or the development of patient information champion programs may aid with patient’s adoption of health technology and patient engagement in self-care.

Anticipatory grieving, grief associated with an impending loss, is common for patients facing end of life or for their families. There is little research on the outcomes of interventions for anticipatory grieving among hospitalized patients. A descriptive, comparative analysis of an existing valid and reliable data set that was obtained through routine nursing clinical practice using standardized nursing terminologies was completed. We applied data mining techniques on a targeted data set consisting of hospital episodes for end-of-life patients who were given a diagnosis of anticipatory grieving. Less than 50% of the patients given a diagnosis of anticipatory grieving met the expected ratings of monitored nursing outcomes at the time of death or discharge. Specifically, for the spiritual health outcome, only more than 50% of the patients met the expected outcome rating. For the comfortable death outcome, only 45.9% of the patients met the outcome rating. For the comfortable death outcome, patients were significantly more likely not to meet the expected outcome rating if they were also given a diagnosis belonging to the physical comfort class (χ2(1) = 8.99, P < .003). These results demonstrate that expected outcomes are not being met and suggest the need of better education for the clinicians about the diagnosis and treatment of anticipatory grieving.

Health Level 7®’s (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) is leading new efforts to make data available to healthcare clinicians, administrators, and leaders. Standardized nursing terminologies were developed to enable nursing’s voice and perspective to be visible within the healthcare data ecosystem. The use of these SNTs has been shown to improve care quality and outcomes, and to provide data for knowledge discovery. The role of SNTs in describing assessments and interventions and measuring outcomes is unique in health care, and synergistic with the purpose and goals of FHIR. FHIR acknowledges nursing as a discipline of interest and yet the use of SNTs within the FHIR ecosystem is rare. The purpose of this article is to describe FHIR, SNTs, and the potential for synergy in the use of SNTs with FHIR. Toward improving understanding how FHIR works to transport and store knowledge and how SNTs work to convey meaning, we provide a framework and examples of SNTs and their coding for use within FHIR solutions. Finally, we offer recommendations for the next steps to advance FHIR-SNT collaboration. Such collaboration will advance both nursing specifically and health care in general, and most importantly, improve population health.