A Nurses Guide To Nursing

PDA’s have become a nurse’s best tool to retrieve fast and accurate information. From nursing students to Nurse Practitioner’s PDA’s have proven to be a very useful gadget to have in their pockets. Not only are they small and compact, making them easy to carry around in coats, but they also are able to carry tons of useful information ranging from medical dictionaries, to nursing textbooks that can be used for referrences.

I personally started using a PDA as I was ending nursing school. Almost immediately i noticed the usefulness and quickness of using a PDA and wondered how I ever got through nursing school with out it. I mostly used it as a drug referrence as I had my clinicals instead of carrying my big drug book around I was able to find a useful program for my PDA called ePocrates Rx. ePocrates Rx comes in two version and free one which is a comprehensive drug guide for PalmOS and ePocrates Rx Pro which you can purchase and use on both Palm PDA’s and Windows. The other great thing about this program is that they offer free updates so that medications stay current, dosing on medications is shown for both adult and pediatrics. Although there are many other medication programs for PDA’s out there, ePocrates has been a very usefull tool for me to have in my nursing career.

PDA’s have many other useful tools like medical referrence book and even medical calculators for IV medication dosing. Other uses for PDA’s is that you can use the planner and also their address book to keep all your contacts available at a moments disposal. If considering purchasing one of these cool and useful gadgets you will find many different kinds and prices so make sure you do your research and see whats out there and get a PDA that’s right for you.

Nursing software for the PDA has helped streamline many tasks for the nurse. With so much nursing software available for the PDA, doctors, patients and even the student nurse can benefit greatly because of instant access to information vital to many areas of nursing.

Some nursing software PDA programs and their benefits are listed below.

Frye’s 3000 Nursing Bullets for NCLEX-RN™ covers all of the clinical areas found on the NCLEX-RN including fundamentals, maternal-neonatal nursing, pediatric nursing, medical-surgical nursing, and psychiatric and mental health nursing. This unique preparation tool helps students prepare for the exam by presenting key facts in random order. Students can study for the exam any time, any place, using this nursing software for the pocket pc.
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One of the most popular and widely used references on PDAs is for medication information. Medication software includes ePocrates, which offers two versions: a free, comprehensive drug guide for use on Palm OS and ePocrates Rx Pro (available for purchase) using both Palm and Windows applications. all ePocrates programs offer frequent updates; information by class or drug name; for adults or pediatrics, and drug interaction information.

Other medication programs for purchase include DrDrugs, A2ZDrugs, MosbyDrugs, and Lexi-Drugs Platinum. These programs offer a wider breadth of information than the free ePocrates, though updates must be purchased. Skyscape Inc., Hudson, Mass. (DrDrugs, A2ZDrugs), offers seamless cross-referencing with other Skyscape products. Lexi-Drugs Platinum offers information tabs to assist in finding data quickly. Drug interaction data is available, though facilitating multi-drug comparison requires the purchase of additional programs (iFacts or Druglx). This feature is important, considering the 1999 National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine report, which suggested that more deaths result from medication errors than industrial accidents.
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