Table 3. Patients' and care team members' perspectives about inpatient portal feature use.

Use of portal features	Patients' perspectives	Care team members' perspectives
Dining on demand	“I find it very convenient to make meal choices using that…my favorite feature was being able to get on there and order my meals and…and, you know, not have to worry about fiddling around with paper menus and all of that mess.” “To be honest I really liked being able to look at all the menu stuff.”	“As far as like being able to order their meals and stuff, that seems to be the biggest thing that they…that I've noticed that patients tend to like. The fact that they can see that their meal plan, they can order on the tablets. It…I think it's been pretty positive as far as things go.” “They're definitely getting the ‘Dining on demand’ if they're able to have a tablet they're able to do that which is really good. The PCAs [patient care assistants] don't have to go in there and do it for them.”
Looking up health information	“I liked the…the MyChart Bedside was better because I could just log into it and look and see the results versus having to wait for the doctor or the nurse to come in and tell me the results.” “I liked the schedule that was on there of what the various times of when I was going to receive my medicine and everything. That way I knew what was coming. I just liked the organization of it.”	“The patients can look at their last, their vital signs so if they have questions–‘Hey what's my temperature? My blood pressure? My pulse?’–they can look at it on the tablet. They can look at when their meds are due. So, if you have a patient that's always like, ‘I need my meds at this time’, they can look on there and see what time their medications are due. They can look to see when their upcoming tests are.” “Why you're here, all your meds, what's coming up later today, stuff like that. So, I've seen them look at it…”
Viewing the care team	“Well the care team, I would go down and the doctors, I would look at the doctors on duty today you know and the nurses on duty…I figured that out you know which was wonderful. That gives you a name and a face that way you don't know…you know a stranger coming into your room. You know some people are uncomfortable with a stranger coming into the room which you know, I understand that. You know, you don't know with people nowadays you don't know what is going to happen.” “I remembered who was my care team that day, but at least I could go back and see who was on my care team, well like if I forgot someone's name, like a PCA's [patient care assistant’s] name, I could look on there and see exactly who is caring for me for that day…Especially the doctors, because there may be a couple different doctors coming in at different days.”	“I think they like seeing the pictures of people because they'll remember, ‘Oh yeah that nurse got me a pop, towel, a blanket,’ you know that type of stuff. So sometimes it is nice when they do have that feature they can go back and see who their team was.” “They can see who their doctors are and their nurses. That is sometimes super confusing to patients because they have so many people in and out of their room so knowing, being able to see if they…this is my medicine doctor, this is my orthopedic doctor, that is super helpful to them.”
Secure messaging	“If you didn't understand something from the doctor you could message him and ask him.” “My phone wouldn't work when I was in the hospital for some reason so using the my…using the tablet was really good. I got to look at my charts and see my bloodwork and see how things were going, and I also it let me venture out to check my emails. I messaged my doctors to see what the…cause like when you look at your bloodwork it's got this scale and it's got numbers and I didn't know what they were. So I, it let me hit a button and ask them questions: ‘What does this mean?’ and ‘Am I okay? Am I going to live?’”	“We always tell them if it's something you need right now use your call light and if it's just kind of something you have a question about a med, not right now, just kind of want to put it on the radar just use that and so that way we don't forget instead of writing it up on their board or something and so that way it keeps flagging.” “I'm in the room all the time. If they have a question they can ask me. I don't have time to sit and answer text messages from patients. It's faster for me to go into the room and say, ‘This is what's going on, I’m going to update you. Do you have any questions? If you do write them down.'”