Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) for Medical Trainee Education

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TitlePersonal Digital Assistants (PDA) for Medical Trainee Education
Faculty/College/UnitMedicine
StatusCompleted
Duration1 Year
Initiation04/01/2002
Completion03/31/2003
Project Summary

The Faculty of Medicine is planning to substantially expand student enrollment and include collaborative sites at the Prince George and Vancouver Island regions starting in the fall, 2004. In the interim, the Faculty will be exploring the use of a number of distributed learning methodologies. One technological approach is to utilize personal digital assistants (PDA) to enable students to access medical expertise and resources. The proposal seeks funds to design and implement a pilot study, with the involvement of medical students, during the academic year of 2002-2003, to achieve the following objectives:

  • To examine the implementation of PDAs as tools for distance learning in a distributed, interdisciplinary learning environment.
  • To develop an automated tracking application to capture learning activities in real time and at the point of care.
  • To develop a set of palm pilot enabled practice guidelines on pediatric immunization for students to refer to every time they see a case in the community.
  • To enable program directors to review data about clerks' clinical exposures in a more timely fashion in order to respond to learning needs and design curriculum activities.
  • To enable clerks to review their own clinical exposures with a centrally managed log, accessible from the Internet and/or the PDA device.
  • To compare and assess if and how PDAs significantly impact on clerks' perceived quality of clinical experiences and learning.
Funding Details
Year 1: Project YearYear 1
Year 1: Funding Year2002/2003
Year 1: Project TypeSmall TLEF
Year 1: Principal InvestigatorKendall Ho
Year 1: Funded Amount31,740
Year 1: Team Members

Kendall Ho, Associate Dean, Continuing Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine
Joan Fraser, Associate Professor / Paediatrics Clerkship Director, Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine
Steven Wong, Program Director, Continuing Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine
Bob Mack, Director, Rural Family Practice Program, Faculty of Medicine
Sandra Selinger, Director, Research, Continuing Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine
Alex Wong, Student Representative, Medicine
Marc Broudo, Associate Director, Educational Support and Development, Faculty of Medicine