Renee McLeod, Director of Vanderbilt University’s Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Specialty Program, makes PDA use a basic part of the school’s nursing programs. She has long believed in the power of handheld computers to provide nurses with quick, accurate information at the point-of-care, which results in decreased errors and creates an evidence-based practice in the clinical area.

"I don't teach facts," McLeod says. "I teach my students how to access information. Today's health-care industry is about accessing knowledge, and a PDA with medical reference software is the most essential tool to do that."

"Having mobile versions of the same trusted textbooks that are typically assigned to students is extremely advantageous", McLeod says. Among the numerous reference resources for nurses and nurse practitioners, are Davis' Drug Guide for Nurse, Taber's Medical Dictionary, Nurse's Fast Facts: The Only Book You Need for Clinicals, 2nd edition, and Harriet Lane.

The PDA, loaded with these kinds of Skyscape references, is the ideal tool for a nurse, often a patient's first and most frequent health-care contact. McLeod says, nurses need some training in how to use a PDA loaded with medical references. "It's not something you know," she says. "We need to start putting the PDAs into our undergraduate nursing curriculum."

McLeod advocates that nursing schools offer classroom sessions in the use of a PDA and how to distill the huge volume of reference materials into actionable knowledge. "How we teach health-care information of the future is not about teaching facts but how to access knowledge and put it in a form that is readily, easily accessible to help us make our clinical decisions," she says. "The PDA is certainly the device that is very amenable to that kind of mobile platform."

"Evidence shows very clearly that when physicians and nurse practitioners have access to correct information, they will check their facts, and we know we have fewer medical errors, and better patient outcomes" McLeod says. “That alone is enough reason to use this device and to teach its use.”