Does Level of Numeracy and Graph Literacy Impact Comprehension of Quality Targets? Findings from a Survey of Home Care Nurses

Clinical dashboards that display targets compared to performance metrics are increasingly used by healthcare organizations in their quality improvement efforts. However, few studies have evaluated the extent to which healthcare professionals can readily understand and interpret these data. This study explored associations between measures of graph literacy and numeracy in home care nurses from two agencies (N=195) with comprehension of quality targets presented in a graphical dashboard format. Data were collected using an online survey. Results from linear regression models indicated that nurses' levels of graph literacy and numeracy were positively associated with comprehension of quality targets. Nurses with low levels of both graph literacy and numeracy tended to have the lowest target comprehension scores compared to those who had high levels of both graph literacy and numeracy. Nurses with low graph literacy and high numeracy also had significantly lower scores for comprehension of quality targets compared to those with high graph literacy and numeracy. These findings suggest that developers of clinical dashboards that incorporate quality target information need to evaluate users' ability to understand the information displayed in graphs and tables before they release the product for general use in healthcare settings.