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Students Guide PDA Recommendations
Pilot Project Directs Handheld Device Support
A 2002 pilot project evaluating the utility of handheld computing devices for second year medical-students has directed the School of Medicine's new PDA (personal digital assistant) recommendations, services, and support plans for this academic year.
Handheld devices are widely utilized in medical practice for tracking patient information, communicating with other care providers, and as easily portable sources of information. Prior to the pilot project launch, Georgetown received a grant of twenty-five Palm PDAs and was one of a select number of schools awarded a Palm Mobile Medicine Grant. Palm's grant program rewards colleges and universities that innovatively incorporate handheld computing devices in medical education, helping students become comfortable with the devices before they enter practice.
Since handheld computing devices emerged on the market, Palm has been the industry leader and the most popular model of personal digital assistant. Devices built on the Palm operating system continue to dominate the entire medical industry as well as at the School of Medicine. "We have asked incoming students if they have a PDA and what operating system they are using," said Brynn Mays, information services librarian at Dahlgren Memorial Library. Approximately 98% of Georgetown medical students with handheld devices owned Palm OS PDAs according to a recent survey.
Because many of GUSM's student PDA owners were third-year students using the devices for clerkship rotations, the benefits of using handhelds during clinical education had already been established. Dahlgren Library suspected that medical students could benefit from adopting handheld devices during the earlier classroom-based phase of their education. To investigate this idea, Dahlgren Memorial Library awarded fifteen of the Palm Pilots to second-year students who volunteered for the pilot project. (The other ten were employed in a Pocket Pearls pilot led by Jeffrey Weinfeld, MD.)
Pilot participants supplied Dahlgren with feedback by responding to regular questionnaires and participating in a focus group discussion at the project's conclusion. Most agreed that having a handheld device helped them understand the academic and clinical uses of PDAs, and more than 60% agreed that the PDA helped them prepare for third-year clinical rotations. However, they did not recommend that PDA ownership be required of second-year students because handhelds were not widely integrated with second-year coursework. Accordingly, for the 2003-2004 academic year, the School of Medicine has suggested that students become familiar with PDAs as soon as possible and strongly recommends that third-year students purchase PDAs for clinical rotations.
Students who take GUSM's recommendation to purchase a PDA can find technical support at the Dahlgren Library. Dahlgren's PDA services were shaped in part by the support students needed during the pilot project. Pilot participants sought the most help when first setting up their PDAs and when installing applications (just as faculty and staff do). Overall, the students found their Palm PDAs easy to use.
Dahlgren supports Palm OS PDAs in several ways:
- Recommending models. A feature comparison chart is available online at http://data.georgetown.edu/dml/pda/gumc_models.htm and from the front desk in Dahlgren Memorial Library.
- Partnering with CDWG, which offers discounts on recommended models and other PDA hardware.
- Providing information and links to free medical applications and resources from the Dahlgren Memorial Library PDA Resources Web page at http://data.georgetown.edu/dml/pda.
- Maintaining syncing stations in Dahlgren library and Caduceus lounge.
- Teaming with faculty from the Department of Family Medicine to hold a PDA orientation for all third-year students on Clinical Skills Day.
- Assisting with troubleshooting and technical support needs for recommended hardware and software. (Dahlgren also provides limited assistance and resources for non-recommended handheld computing devices.)
Students in the pilot used their PDAs not just for academic functions but also for the PDA's original purpose, as an organizational tool. Both students in the pilot and in the general population requested that their course schedules be made available to download to their PDAs. Last year Dahlgren provided a static copy of the School of Medicine's course schedule but found that the schedule fluctuated so much in the beginning of the academic term that the copy was outdated as soon as it was provided. This year, GUSM has coordinated with UIS to supply CorporateSync (a version of CorporateTime for the Palm) free of charge to all students. CorporateSync allows students to download their class schedules from the same data source as the GUCalendar CorporateTime master schedule, ensuring accuracy. (More information on CorporateSync can be found on the PDA Resources Calendar Software Web page.)
The School of Medicine is not requiring students to own a PDA for the 2003-2004 academic year but will consider adding a requirement in a subsequent year as PDAs are adopted in more clinical settings. An interdepartmental committee with student members is currently discussing the possibility of a PDA requirement. A poster presentation on the outcome of the Palm Mobile Medicine grant project can be found online in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format at http://data.georgetown.edu/dml/pda/pdf/dml_pda_pilot.pdf.
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