Purdue University: Breaking New Ground with the Use of PDAs in Education

Purdue University is breaking new ground with the use of PDAs in education at the School of Nursing. Director of Information Technology & Assistant Professor Karen Chang has used a PDA to assist her work for a number of years. Rather than keep the benefit to herself, she secured funding from two separate grants and now students have PocketPCs with Skyscape-powered medical reference titles to aid their clinical rotations. Chang turned to PDAs because paper-based work proved to be both time-consuming and inefficient. Also, PDAs gave quick access to information needed to provide adequate care. “Information is key for patient care” she points out.

Chang found Skyscape titles to be the best way to introduce students to PDAs. Now they find them to be essential. “When you teach a new technology, you go with whatever is easy. Skyscape software is the easiest and the most user-friendly. You don’t have to teach too much.” She cited the SmartTab, which enables users to jump between different references, as the most useful function.

Chang relies on the RN Drug Guide, IV Meds, RN Access, RN Diseases and RN Labs for her rounds. The drug guide is the favored title among her nursing colleagues with IV Meds coming in a close second.

Chang has developed her own PDA program in a collaborative effort from a professor from the computer technology department. Dubbed the “iCare Worksheet”, it allows nurses in her program to enter in updated patient information, which then leads to quick data retrieval. This program most benefits shift changes, when one nurse comes off a shift and a new one comes on. Combined with Skyscape titles, nurses can get the information they need at the point of care and at the beginning or end of a shift.

Chang decided to quantify the efficiency of her new program with a study that she conducted in August 2004. Each nurse on the acute care medical floor was given a PDA to use with the iCare Worksheet. The majority of the nurses survived, who had worked an average of 7-8 years in that hospital, had never used a PDA and tape recorders were used for patient information.

Chang’s study found that using a PDA for patient information retrieval, shift report times were reduced by 8 minutes. In what is known as “taking” a report, a nurse starting a shift would retrieve all patient information on an average of 25 minutes using a tape recorder but 17 minutes with a PDA.

Chang believes Purdue is on the forefront of this technology. “I would like to see more PDAs in a hospital setting. Healthcare needs to and will move in this direction. I hope in the future students will have PDAs when they begin”