Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records: Impacts on Nursing Documentation Practices at a University Hospital

In a Norwegian health region, patients have online access to their own electronic health record and they can also read the nursing documentation. This paper presents a qualitative study made at a university hospital to investigate how patient accessible electronic health records impact on nursing documentation practices. Semi-structured interviews were made with 12 informants from 5 cardiology departments at one hospital regarding how they used electronic nursing documentation in their daily practice and how they experienced patient accessible nursing documentation. The nurses emphasized that they focused on a clear and well-written nursing documentation, but in some situations, they were hesitant to write sensitive information. The study concluded that the implementation of patients' reading access to the electronic health record had limited impact on the nursing documentation and the daily practice at the departments, but the nursing handover had an even more important function for oral exchange of information.