PDA’s at the Point-of Care in Clinical Nursing Education:
A Pilot Project Or “A Brain in My Pocket”
by Nancy Lawrence, PhD Student & Sandra Goldsworthy R.N., B.Sc.N, CNCC, M.Sc.
ABSTRACT
The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) is Ontario’s first university utilizing a “web-centric approach” to teaching and learning. The School of Health Science at UOIT coupled with Durham College’s (DC) School of Health and Human Studies requires that all collaborative nursing students bring a laptop computer to classes and labs.
The increasingly complex and changing nature of health care impacts on the ways nursing is practiced, and more significantly the on the need for access to current information in the clinical setting. Nurses increasingly work in environments that employ the latest information and communication technology (ICT) to research, administer, and deliver health care to clients. It is important for the graduates of nursing programs to be competent with the technology that is embedded in their nursing environments and to demonstrate leadership as technology evolves even closer to the bedside and to the point-of-care. The current “web-centric approach” to nursing education at DC-UOIT has been expanded to include a pilot project which brings PDAs (personal digital assistants) to the point-of-care. This pilot project is meant to extend the scholarship of teaching to further build the bridge between teaching and learning in technology and nursing.
Using the preliminary findings from this pilot project the presenters will describe the impact of PDAs at the point-of-care on risk and harm statistics (specifically preparedness for medication administration), and the impact of PDAs on the students’ time management and decision-making in the clinical setting. Data collected from the pilot project will be shared along with the most recent literature on teaching with PDAs in a clinical setting. Conclusions will focus on the lessons learned using PDAs at the point-of-care and their impact on students’ perceptions of their impact on self-efficacy.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nancy Lawrence, M Ed PhD Student
Nancy graduated in 1975 from Women’s College Hospital School of Nursing/ Ryerson University. Then, after finishing her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from The University of Toronto she worked for several years in the ICU at the Hospital for Sick Children. Over her career Nancy has worked for Toronto Public Health, and the Scarborough Hospital Emergency Department. She continued her studies to complete a Masters in Education at Brock University in 1999, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Nursing at McMaster University. In 2001 she began teaching for Durham College and is currently a full time faculty member teaching in the Collaborative Baccalaureate Nursing Program with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Nancy’s fascination with all things technical has fostered her interest to introducing technology into nursing education. Teaching in the web-centric environment at UOIT gave her the starting point from which to introduce hand held computing at the bedside for undergraduate nursing students. She is currently researching the impact of hand held computing in nursing education on students’ self-efficacy, preparation for med administration, and time management. With very positive preliminary results the second phase of the research will be to reproduce the study using hand held computing and state of the art simulation equipment in a virtual clinical experience.
Sandra Goldsworthy R.N., B.Sc.N, CNCC, M.Sc.
None provided.
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