Paper
Friday, July 23, 2004
The Personal Digital Assistant: Building a Research Community Through Use of a "Techie Textbook” for Nursing Clinicals
Margaret Williams, DNSc, RN and Carol Ann Moseley, PhD, RN. Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing, Quincy, IL, USA
| Learning Objective #1: Describe the results of using PDAs in diverse clinical courses for undergraduate nursing students |
| Learning Objective #2: Examine the ability of a PDA to retrieve and organize nursing data for patient care |
Changing technology is creating new ways to approach nursing practice. Nursing students' use of technology to access and use data for clinical decision making poses an interdisciplinary challenge for library resources, clinical units and colleges. Objective: To analyze the ability of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to assist in retrieving and organizing nursing data for patient care. Concept: Rogers Diffusion of Innovations Change Theory Design: Quasi-experimental design with test and control group with pre and posttests. Population: Nursing students in leadership, medical-surgical clinical courses and specialty nursing courses Sample: Six groups of seven BSN students in clinical courses. Setting: Rural Midwest medical center campus Methods: Three clinical groups and their clinical instructor used PDAs for patient preparation and patient care. The three control groups used the standard preparation and care methods. The project clinical groups were trained on PDA usage and applications. They were given the PDAs for a block of time during the semester. The PDA held Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses, RNLabs (Nurse's Manual of Laboratory and Diagnostic Tests), and RNDiseases (Diseases and Disorders: A Nursing Therapeutics Manual) and other pertinent software. Student and instructor use of the PDAs was monitored throughout the project. Pretest and posttests were given to both groups. Findings: Results from the first phase revealed student openness to using new technology, i.e. PDAs, in clinical practice. The second phase of the research study demonstrated increased mastery in the use of new technology for information retrieval in clinical practice. The third phase revealed the differences between information needs between medical surgical practice and specialty maternal-child practice. Conclusions: Results from the project will be discussed and recommendations given for use of this technology in nursing education and practice. Implications: The potential implications for print and electronic library resources will be shared.
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