Personal Digital Assistants

Hudson, K., & Buell, V. (2011). Empowering a safer practice: PDAs are integral tools for nursing and health care. Journal of Nursing Management, 19, 400-406. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2834.2011.0125.

 This article reports a study of personal digital assistants (PDAs) using Lewin’s Change Theory as a framework to institute change in an educational setting. The authors assert that the use of PDAs improve safety at the bedside through the efficient retrieval of health and nursing facts. They also report that “handheld technologies support learners in authentic and seamless nursing such as within clinical and educational settings” (p. 401). Lewen’s Change Theory was valuable in this study because in this Texas nursing program PDAs were being introduced for the first time.

PDAs in this study included pharmacology, laboratory information, medical dictionary, patient teaching, health assessment, nursing procedures, pathophysiology, calculations, foreign language interpretation and nursing diagnoses. I found it interesting that most of these functions were not used frequently. The most commonly used function was the drug reference (41%), followed by patient teaching (19%). There was much interesting data presented in this article about student satisfaction with the PDA as well as common problems associated with their use. There was even data about the perceptions of client family and staff members when students used PDAs. Most family members liked the PDA use, though one family thought the student was not smart if s(he) had to use it!

I found the most useful part of this article to be the importance of role models in change theory. In this study the authors noted that staff members were not using PDAs. Instructors were using them and had one month to use the device before teaching students. Students were required to purchase PDAs (an obstacle for some). If PDAs improve the safety and quality of patient care as the authors assert, it’s important to support the adoption of this technology.  In order to be supportive, I need to explore the use of these devices, incorporating all the functions in my teaching. Students need to know that the money they have invested in this tool is not wasted. Role modeling the use PDAs in the classroom and in the clinical setting will encourage students to adopt this technology.