Emergency Room Doctor had a Clie

[davy19]

I was in the emergency room the other night in a hospital in NJ,

was with my grandmother who was having some problems, and when all of a sudden the ER doc I was talking to whipped out a Clie, he did it so fast could not see the model but pretty sure it was the NR70V, becuase it had the camera and was skinny.


Either way kind of cool to see him walking around using it. He was using it to do something either write down patient notes or medicine not really sure.

[Unregistered]

Healthcare, providers of various types, were early adopters of handheld technology.

[Caleb_pearson]

I am in the behavioral health field, it is very useful, I am also a graduate student, and is invaluable.

[cerberus]

All 'GOOD' doctors have Clies!! My wife included!!:D :D :D :D

[crh3f]

I'm a second year medical student, and so far my NR has been an awesome resource! The doc may very well have been looking up a medication, calculating an IV rate, etc...there are numerous programs for all of that.

[legohead]

I'm wondering where you draw the line on how much to depend on a 'crutch.' I know some people who have a lot of trouble with math since they always depended on a calculator. PDA's can be very useful for organization and for easy reference of materials, but there is probably some point where it turns into a 'crutch' and can be counterproductive. Very scary if professionals start to be too reliant on 'em.

Sometimes i fear that if i use the Clie too much for organization, I will lose my organizational and memory abilities and become too dependent.

How much is too much?

[n2ifp]

I would die without my Clie, so I guess I am dependant :)!

[crh3f]

you've got a very good point. from what i've been able to see so far, physicians for the most part use it as a convenience, vs a crutch. For instance, using a PDA for medication look-up replaces the decades-old Physician's Desk Reference, a quick drug reference booklet they all own. When it comes to calculating an IV rate, yes, use of a calculator may eventually diminish your ability to do it on your own, you're correct.

As for medical reference texts, most medical students already use multiple textbooks to find information they don't know; now they're all in one place on the PDA. So in my mind, there's no difference...in the process of becoming a physician, you use reference texts to learn; once you're a physician, you either know your stuff, or, when something comes out of left field, you know where to find it.

I don't think that a doctor could make it through medical school and a difficult residency using a PDA purely as a crutch, but I do understand the concern.

[Unregistered]

If you think that a physician can remember every single thing they might need to know in an ED, then you over estimate their divinity :). That is why if you were able to look around you would find reference books in any ED.

[legohead]

Yeah. The only thing is that i many times get the feeling that when i manually use my fingers to flip pages in a book, the info seeps into my head. when using the computer and all these automated things, it's somewhat different. It's just not the same (at least for me).

Anyways, Crh3f, you said you're in med school. how many other classmates (or if it's a large class, what percentage) would you say use PDAs? Maybe it would be an actually interesting study to follow up on the PDA-using med students and the non-PDA students and see who makes it to the top at the end (statistics-wise). I wish you luck in YOUR studies with your Clie!

P.S. what's ED as referred in the previous post? did ya' mean ER?

[GeekGod]

Well, since I've never had much of a memory, and piss-poor organizational skills, I figure I've got nothing to lose. :rolleyes:

[jthompson]

Handhelds are fast becoming as standard a tool for doctors as stethoscopes. Doctors bring information to bear for patients to help solve a problem -- its one of a doctor's most important functions, if you think about it. There is too much information, changing at too fast a rate, for human brains to remember everything accurately all the time. Handhelds serve patients by allowing doctors rapid access to pertinent, accurate information at the bedside. Handhelds are revolutionizing medicine in that respect. It's just one of the tools, like an otoscope or a cardiac monitor, but an increasingly important one.

[Unregistered]

ed = emergency department which is how they are being referred to in many hospitals nowadays.

[crh3f]

Originally posted by legohead
Yeah. The only thing is that i many times get the feeling that when i manually use my fingers to flip pages in a book, the info seeps into my head. when using the computer and all these automated things, it's somewhat different. It's just not the same (at least for me).

Anyways, Crh3f, you said you're in med school. how many other classmates (or if it's a large class, what percentage) would you say use PDAs? Maybe it would be an actually interesting study to follow up on the PDA-using med students and the non-PDA students and see who makes it to the top at the end (statistics-wise). I wish you luck in YOUR studies with your Clie!

P.S. what's ED as referred in the previous post? did ya' mean ER?

ED = Emergency Department, as said above. B/c it's not just a "room".

Our school allotted, in our budget for this year (as we are all about to enter clinical rotations) about $300 for a PDA. So, the majority, I'd say over 75%, of my class now have them. I am probably the most PDA-savvy of the class, so I do a LOT of the tech support and the "how-to" handling. Level of usage varies greatly, probably correlating with level of technical knowledge. I've been using one for 5 years now, others, about 2 weeks. So far, the hospitals we hook up with haven't integrated wireless/bluetooth, so they are purely for our own reference and learning. Some places are using them as a so-far primitive form of record keeping.

[crh3f]

Oh yeah...and so far, PDA or not, I'm one of the top 5 to 10 in my class. So I'd skew the curve on your experiment. Just a little bragging ;)

[elf]

My sister is a pharmacologist who uses her Visor (which I got her for her b-day) to store drug databases.

There are certain medications that should not be taken "together" because of lethal interactions-- her visor was a means for her to double-check her memory against the database. She whould normally have to refer to a drug database reference book (about 6" thick); the Visor allowed her to carry the entire databse in her pocket.

[legohead]

ED = Emergency Department, as said above. B/c it's not just a "room".

That's good. Since unless you docs sterilize your PDAs before surgery, you had better not be touching it during the operation.

[Unregistered]

We try our best to only do surgery in the operating suites :) and not in the Emergency Department.

[Unregistered]

etc etc. I have 71M (Palm compressed) in PDB already

[crh3f]

Right...most PDAs don't come out during surgeries. Used mainly as reference when looking up associated symptoms, differential diagnoses, treatment options; most often away from the bedside after seeing a patient.

[crh3f]

Let me restate that: I would be extremely surprised to see ANY PDAs used during a surgery, unless (improbably) it's by someone who's not scrubbed in, and doesn't violate the sterile field; maybe the surgeon asked someone to look something up for him/her.

[Unregistered]

"That's good. Since unless you docs sterilize your PDAs before surgery, you had better not be touching it during the operation."

Wondering where you got the idea a physician or any member of the surgical team would be using a PDA during the procedure? Perhaps you confused an emergency department with the OR?

[Kate]

My GP has a T615. ;)

But then he was always cool ;)

~Kate

[rob_squared]

Is anyone else disturbed that someone would worry about what handheld a doctor is using when their RELATIVE is in the hospital?

[Kate]

When was the last time you took a relative to hospital?

Most of the time you sit around waiting, and you'll think about anything, to keep the awful thoughts at bay.

I sat by my Grandfathers side for three days when he had a stroke. I noticed EVERYTHING that happened in that room!

~Kate

[legohead]

Wondering where you got the idea a physician or any member of the surgical team would be using a PDA during the procedure? Perhaps you confused an emergency department with the OR?

I was kidding around. Sorry if it was too subtle! Anyways if you look back, you'll see that my comment began with "that's good." i wrote that in reference to crh3f's comment that we're talking about the ED; not the ER.

[crh3f]

:)

sarcasm is really tough to pull off in typing... ;)

[legohead]

sarcasm is really tough to pull off in typing...

Guess so. ...But if you thing it's tough to pull off in typing, try it with your patients in the future some time. :D

[Unregistered]

LMAO, you don't know the docs I do :).