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‘What are effective strategies to identifying and overcoming barriers to comprehension of information delivered to patients during hospitalisation and at discharge?’ This is one of 11 priority questions identified through the Improving Hospital Outcomes through Patient Engagement Study, a 2018 Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)-funded project to define a patient-centred research agenda for hospital medicine.1 In this issue of BMJ Quality & Safety, Goyal et al explored the use of whiteboards in patient rooms as one such strategy.

The article, entitled ‘Do Beside Whiteboards Enhance Communication in Hospitals? An Exploratory Multi-Method Study of Patient and Nurse Perspectives’, examined the perspectives of both patients and nurses on whiteboard use.2 Over a year, the team surveyed almost 500 adults admitted at the University of Michigan Hospital in order to elicit their views on usability and content of whiteboard information. The authors also included nurses’ perspectives gathered through a focus group. Both patients and nurses felt that whiteboards were an important communication tool. However, they identified opportunities for improvement too.

One way to better use whiteboards for communication and information sharing may be to actively encourage patient involvement in the use of the whiteboards. Most nurses in the Goyal et al study felt responsible for maintaining the whiteboard, and only 60% of patients reported being aware they could use the board to pose questions to the care team.2 Perhaps care teams could physically give patients a whiteboard …