Nurses Roles and Personal Health Records

Personal Health Records Main Concepts and Current Issues
Personal health record (PHR) is a very useful tool for patient and not to be confused as medical records. Personal health Record is electronic file or record designed to help patients manage their health information and be more involved in their health care, while a medical record is patient health record manage by healthcare providers. Over the years, as technology is progressing and the amount of healthcare providers are increasing, we found that more and more patients are participating in their health care via personal health record (Smith, 2009), which is a long way from what PHR use to be studied for. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) had funded $1.2 million grant to study the use of personal health record to help patients deal with hypertension (2008). They believed that the more engaged and involved a patient was in their health care, the more they work to better their outcome. The plan made a lot of sense even though there were a lot of disputes whether or not it would be helpful to patients, due to lack of understanding and computer access (2008). Successfully the study had shown that personal health records are in fact an effective tool to help combat not only hypertension but other chronic disease as well (2008). Until today, personal health records are still receiving an increase amount of demand in health care. According to a 2008 consumer study in Manhattan Research, around 7 million people throughout the US had used the PHR, and more than 70 million were interested in doing again (Smith, 2009), but the extent to which consumers use them will depend on how well they understand the PHR.
In the July, 2008 Summer Institute in Nursing Informatics, it was discussed that “a nursing viewpoint is essential for making PHRS truly useful to consumers (Thede, 2009), which that when it comes to designing personal health record nursing perspectives are strongly considered necessary. Nurses interact the most with patient direct care and have the competence to answer any questions relate to their health that will not only be helpful to consumers but will also give them confidence when managing their personal health record. The main point that needs to be concentrate on when designing a personal health record is to recognize the target audience and have a different design for both clinician and consumers that is meaningful and helpful to them (Thede, 2009). When designing a personal health record not only should they consider consumers and healthcare providers “health literacy”, meaning their capacity to comprehend and process the health information, and what both party want to learn from the PHR as well (Thede, 2009). A personal heath information should be “actionable” (Thede, 2009), which mean that a personal health information should provide more action than information. And when creating a personal health record another consideration is “the source and nature of the information desired (Thede, 2009), not overload the website which unnecessary information just go straight to the point.
Nurses can play a very important role when it comes to designing personal health records. Like I said before, nurses are more involved with patient care and are more familiar with what patients are looking for and need to improve their health. Even though it makes perfect sense for nurses to participate in creating personal health records, I also believe that when it comes to patients’ health it should be a team effort from the whole health care team to come with a close to perfect design that would work for everyone.

Bibliography
(2008). PHR use to be studied for the ability to help deal with hypertension. Medical Device Daily, 12(27), 4. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Smith, J. (2009). Personal Health Records- Altering The Future Of Health Care. Pharmacy Times, 75(7), 58-59. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Thede, L. (2009). Informatics: Electronic Personal Health Records: Nursing’s Role. Online Journal Of Issues in Nursing, 14(1), 2. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.