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A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article related to the doctor of nursing practice (DNP) education for nurses.

The article discusses a study which determined the experiences of registered nurses with, and attitudes toward the standardized nursing terminologies (SNT) which are recognized by the American Nurses Association. A big proportion of respondents reported that they had no experience with or knowledge of any SNT. SNTs that were the most familiar to the respondents are the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA), Nursing Intervention Classification (NIC), and Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC).

The article focuses on the rising popularity of electronic personal health records (PHR) and the role of nurses in making PHR useful to consumers. The factors which contribute to the fact that less than 50% of the U.S. population can refer to one source for healthcare information are cited. The three types of PHR are discussed which include institution-centered PHR, self-maintained PHR, and a linked record that can import information from different sources. It stresses the need for nurses to be in the forefront of designing PHR for consumers.

The article looks at the implications of the advent of the electronic health record (EHR) for U.S. nurses. It predicts that sharing EHR between unrelated providers will lead to the creation of a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) and the RHIO will be combined until they are connected in a National Health Information Network (NHIN). In the author's view, the role of nursing in healthcare will remain invisible due to the exclusion of data they collected from records. She stresses the need to get nursing care data in an electronic format.