Abstract
The study aimed to clarify nurses' perceptions of an electronic patient record (EPR) system that partially conceals patients' personal information. Among the 515 hospitals in central Japan that have EPR systems or an order entry system, 736 nurses at 21 hospitals were surveyed anonymously. After the respondents gave a look at printed descriptions of EPR systems, they completed a self-reported questionnaire about their acceptance of partially concealing some categories of information contained in the EPR system in their daily nursing care. Among 415 nurses (58.7% response rate), 39.0% of them agreed with a partial concealment for the patient information depending on demand of the patients. As to the range of partially concealing, 59.3% agreed to each item level, and 32.7% agreed to a category level. However, 49.4% of the nurses answered they wanted to check all information at once, if necessary alternatively 41.2% of them wanted to be shown each items successively. 33.3% answered that the range of concealing should be designed based on the type of profession. Many nurses agreed with the idea of partially concealing information contained in the EPR system according to patients' requests.
