Nurses and the Use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) at the Point of Care

Abstract

Nurses are knowledge workers who require access to evidence-based resources to provide safe clinical care and improve patient outcomes. Nurses face heavy workloads, staff shortages, and limited technological resources, factors that inhibit their ability to access electronic healthcare resources where they need them most at the point of care. Although there is extensive research about nursing students using hardware devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) to access electronic resources, there are few studies about nurses who follow or continue this practice in the clinical setting. This paper discusses the use of PDAs to provide access to electronic educational resources for nurses at the point of care in a hospital setting. Although the use of wireless PDAs in nursing would facilitate access to an array of evidence-based resources, PDAs are not commonly used by nurses.