Steps to success: introducing PDAs at the University of Connecticut Health Center School of Medicine / Der Weg zum Erfolg: Einführung von PDAs an der Health Center School of Medicine der Universität Connecticut

Abstract

The LM Stowe Library helps implement and support a personal digital assistant (PDA) program for the School of Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut. This article describes the role of the library and the library staff in purchasing and supporting PDA content and in providing student academic computing support for the students who are required to purchase PDAs in their second year of medical school. The PDAs are used principally for providing full text decision making tools at the point of care and for maintaining logs of aggregate data about each student’s patient encounters. This latter use helps ensure students see an adequate variety of patients such as obstetric, cardiac or adolescent patients.

Keywords

• PDA computers
• Pocket PC
• Palm
• medical education
• undergraduate
• medical library
• librarian