At Indiana University East, senior students in the nursing program hold vital patient information in the palms of their hands.

IU East nursing students have been assigned Palm Pilots (personal digital assistant or PDAs.) By touching a stylus to the device’s display monitor, the students can access reference materials that have been downloaded into the PDAs memory, including information for a patient’s chart, nursing forms, pharmacological references, standard calculators, medical calculators, and obstetric and pediatric calculations.

The nursing program purchased the PDAs with the assistance of an IU East Technology Advancement Teaching and Learning Award. Lecturers Diana Stanforth and Michele Curry and former lecturer Mary Lou Koenig applied for the grant.

The project has allowed the lecturers to evaluate how new technology is fitting into the daily working lives of nurses. The handheld devices have improved students’ time management, allowing them to gather and input data at clinical sites, and helped improve the efficiency of patient care through the easy access to needed resources loaded on the PDAs.

The devices have also improved the technological expertise of the nursing students. Before receiving their PDAs, many of the students were previously unfamiliar with the technology.

“I think the handheld devices are increasing student knowledge. They have been made compatible with the students’ clinical work, and the students have increased how they are using technology. Many of the students have told us the PDAs have been a wonderful resource,” Stanforth says.
Many physicians and pharmacists currently use Palm Pilots, but they are not yet a tool for most nurses. According to Stanforth, IU East is the only IU campus utilizing PDAs in its nursing curriculum so far. Other campuses are awaiting the outcomes of the IU East program as they explore integrating the technology. The lecturers will continue to evaluate the PDA project through May.

Stanforth hopes to continue improving IU East’s nursing program by upgrading the PDAs to keep pace with technological advances and by integrating laptop computers into the classroom. The computers would be used in conjunction with the PDAs as well as in clinical studies.