Nurses' preferences for the format of care planning clinical decision support coded with standardized nursing...

Current electronic health records (EHRs) are often ineffective in identifying patient priorities and care needs requiring nurses to search a large volume of text to find clinically meaningful information. Our study, part of a larger randomized controlled trial testing nursing care planning clinical decision support coded in standardized nursing languages, focuses on identifying format preferences after random assignment and interaction to 1 of 3 formats (text only, text+table, text+graph). Being assigned to the text+graph significantly increased the preference for graph (P = .02) relative to other groups. Being assigned to the text only (P = .06) and text+table (P = .35) was not significantly associated with preference for their assigned formats. Additionally, the preference for graphs was not significantly associated with understanding graph content (P = .19). Further studies are needed to enhance our understanding of how format preferences influence the use and processing of displayed information.