Table 2.

Focus group themes and representative comments, n=statement frequency

Theme	Representative Comments
Application of Numbers (n=192)	How numbers are applied in kidney care: “I weigh myself here when I leave, then I go home and make sure it’s the right weight and say if I go over … I think I feel it, and I see it, I say, oh no, I’ve got to stop right now.”43 year old man “Even when I was in self-care [a program that emphasized patient education and provided support for increased patient self-management in dialysis], they told us to write out blood pressures… You had a pad and….we would go to the weight machine and write our weight down, write our blood pressures down…I am still continuing to do that. “ 49 year old man Facilitators: “Yeah, I like to get it that way (a paper document with laboratory values written down). Then I can take the paper home and show it to my husband. And he knows what I need to increase or decrease. I don’t have to try to remember.” 67 year old woman “…Just write it out. I think that’s what they do in there. Most of the time when I get my sheet…you can understand it.”75 year old man Barriers: “Well, I have a nurse that - she don’t explain anything. She comes up. She will cut the machine off if it’s out - beeping or whatever. But she (won’t) tell you why or what’s going on.”52 year old man (Technology as a barrier) “I bought a digital scale one time and got batteries for it and everything. Set up and stood up on that scale and looked down and couldn’t read the numbers. …Standing there, that far away from the scale. So I couldn’t stand up and get my weight. I had to get off the scale to get close to the numbers, then you can’t weigh.”52 year old man (Units of measurement as a barrier, i.e. the metric system) “I’d rather use the pounds system.” 59 year old woman “I don’t too much identify with the metrics.” 49 year old man [Reference to medication dosages]”(I want them to teach) about the kilograms…how much kilograms you need, how much you’re supposed to take” [Later, reference to daily sodium intake…]”Yeah, that’s all I use (each day)… about 1 kilogram of salt” 39 year old woman Application of numbers in general context of life: “I used to do a production job and you had to keep up with the amount that you build…plus, if your machine went down, you had to keep up with your downtime, that all adding in on your pay. So it was all about numbers.”54 year old man “You need numbers to keep up with your pennies in the bank.”75 year old man
Acquisition & Mastery (n=116)	Knowledge and background of numbers: “I am probably overstating it, but numbers (referring to counting odds) at one time helped a lot of people learn to count because they had to. I am not saying everybody, but some of the seniors … It helped them.” 75 year old man Facilitators: “I learned from older patients…we learned a lot of things from problems they had with numbers… on certain things that we didn’t know anything about.”43 year old man “I deal with the dietician more than anybody. She is the one I look for.” 70 year old woman Barriers: “My iron levels…All I know is I’m getting extra iron…They don’t say, well, your iron level is so and so. They just tell you that it was low.” 59 year old woman “It has not been explained to me just what the numbers represent. What they mean.”52 year old man Suggestions for improvements: [Regarding numeric displays on dialysis machines during treatments]”I think I have my own ideas about it, but I’m not sure they are correct…and I would like for somebody to explain it more in detail than they have.”52 year old woman “We don’t get a computer printout of our iron, stats, or our hematocrit stats. It’s just the nurses and the doctors get it and I don’t think that’s right either. I think that we should be able to get the whole, complete, stats of what all of our - all readings are.”59 year old woman
Attitude and self-efficacy (n=48)
Attitude toward numbers (n=28)	“I don’t know how you can operate - do anything - without some kind of numbers.”75 year old man “Well, I think the numbers are good because they let us know what if you did something out of the ordinary that wasn’t right or something … They let you know if you are not eating right or whatever when it comes to your numbers or if your blood count is too low or if you need iron…or certain medications…I think they really, really help out.”59 year old woman
Confidence/Self-efficacy in using numbers (n=20)	Example statement reflecting low self-efficacy (n=12): “I don’t always feel comfortable because I know a lot of time I don’t understand it…as I was growing up, [my sister] would get grades in school and I always wished I could make the kind of grades she made. She would make the teachers throw a curve in any Math class she ever took…all her scores would come back 110 points…I am sitting here looking at this thinking, I can’t get 30 points off a Math test.” 52 year old man “I know how to put the scale on kilograms but other than that I don’t know (anything) about numbers.”41 year old man Other statements reflected high self-efficacy (n=4): “Math was one of my hardest subjects, [but] in dialysis, I got to do numbers and to… write all my stuff down. So I enjoyed it, it makes a difference.” 49 year old man Importance of confidence(n=4): “I think the more you know, the better you can deal with it and the more confidence you will have” 43 year old man