Development and psychometric testing of the Readiness to Engage with Patient-Facing Health Information Technology Tools (RE-PHIT) scale.

OBJECTIVE: With the proliferation of patient-facing health information technology (HIT) tools, nurses are in a position to support the technology needs of both patients and families. The purpose of this study was to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Readiness to Engage with Patient-Facing Health Information Technology (RE-PHIT) instrument intended to measure nurse readiness to support patient and family use of HIT tools. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Content for the 10-item instrument was derived from the literature, notably from Hibbard's Patient Activation Measure and from expert nurse informaticists. Instrument validation was achieved through an expert panel approach for assessing content validity, exploratory factor analysis for assessing the construct validity and Cronbach's alpha were used to estimate the internal consistency reliability. RESULTS: Content validity produced indices ranging from 0.86 to 1.00 for all items. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a one-factor solution consisting of 10 items that explained 62.6% of the total variance and internal consistency reliability was high with a α = 0.93. DISCUSSION: Findings support the validity and reliability of a new instrument, RE-PHIT, which can be used to measure nurses' readiness to engage with patients and families with HIT tools. Future testing of this instrument should be conducted in additional care settings with different types of nursing clinical workflows and HIT tools. CONCLUSION: A 10-item instrument, RE-PHIT, was developed to measure nurse readiness to support patient and family use of HIT tools. Results of the psychometric testing confirmed that the RE-PHIT scale is a valid and reliable tool.

Population health: a nursing action plan.

The passage of the Affordable Care Act shifted the focus of health care from individual, patient specific, episodic care, towards health management of groups of people with an emphasis on primary and preventive care. Population health management assists to attain and maintain health while improving quality and lowering costs. The recent Catalyst for Change report creates an urgent call for harnessing the power of nurses-in our communities, schools, businesses, homes and hospitals-to build capacity for population health. Informatics Nurse Specialists are prepared to bridge roles across practice, research, education, and policy to support this call. Each year, the AMIA Nursing Informatics Working Group convenes an expert panel to reflect on the "hot topics" of interest to nursing. Not surprisingly, the 2017 topic was on the current state and challenges of population health. The following summary reflects the panel's perspectives and recommendations for action.