title: Capturing patient encounters during health care provider training using Personal Digital Assistants.
abstract: Contemporary allied health education requires students experience both a depth and breadth of clinical encounters to prepare them to provide an increasingly broadening and evolving scope of practice. The Physician Assistant (PA) Studies program and the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) Graduate Nursing Program at Wichita State University, College of Health Professions joined forces to undertake a project to introduce Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to their students. One aspect of this project was the logging method used by students. The PA program further studied the tracking and used three different logging methods with three different cohorts to capture patent encounter data during standard clinical rotations: paper logs, web-based logs and Using Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Results indicate that patient encounter data were significantly better using PDAs than the other two methods. This report presents the background and results of the project as well as lessons learned.
authors.affiliation: College of Health Professions, Wichita State University, 1845 Fairmount, Wichita, KS 67260-0043, USA. charles.fox@wichita.edu
authors.forename: Charles R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Fox
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Day
authors.forename: Audrey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Griffin
authors.forename: Alicia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Huckstadt
mesh_terms: D000488:Allied Health Personnel; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D034201:Computers, Handheld / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate; D004517:Education, Professional / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D015274:Interdepartmental Relations; D020407:Internet; D007615:Kansas; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009722:Nurse Practitioners / Q000193:education*; D010823:Physician Assistants / Q000193:education*; D011231:Preceptorship; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012984:Software; D013334:Students; D014584:User-Computer Interface