Online sources...beware!

Time and time again we read about mistakes. Here's another strike against Wikipedia: Irish student hoaxes world media.

Vet your sources carefully!

Some items of note

I've been busy, so hence, I've neglected my postings to this blog. There are so many exciting things popping up in my mailbox from the different listservs and publications, that it is an enormous task to read them every day.

Here are a few items of interest I've found recently.

Do you use a PDA on your job or at home? Do you access e-mail in public places or read documents on it? You may be interested in the latest gadget--privacy screens for PDAs. These have been very common for desktop and laptop PCs in healthcare for a long time, but for many years, the prices were very prohibitive.

As with anything, the costs have come down and you can find a privacy screen for your PDA for under $20 at vendors such as http://www.pocketsolutions.com/. You name the device and they have accessories for it. They also have a large selection of accessories for smartphones and Blackberries, too.

This article from HealthData Management in April 2008 discusses the winners of the 2008 Nursing Information Technology Innovation Award. The situations described are prime examples of how IT is integrating into the nursing workflow to make a difference.

Medscape, as I've mentioned before, has a lot of neat things for nurses, but also has a section for NPs. This article describes some of the applications for nursing education for NPs, as more and more master's level programs go online.

In addition, since more folks are going online to learn via distance education on the internet, some colleges are turning to tools to make cheating more difficult. This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses one tech option.

Finally, since I'm seeing a lot of articles about hospitals and technical redesigns to aid nurses in their work, I also found this recent article on how architects are now designing hospitals with the aid of doctors, nurses, and neuroscientists. On the same note, it's a little more dated, but this 2005 article discusses designing nurses' stations. This is important since physical plant restrictions can also play a part in implementing technology solutions.

iPhone link

I found this link while surfing around the other day:

iPhoneMedicine

Dr. Salvatore Volpe has lots of information regarding various products and services available for iPhone. The latest news, which was really interesting to me, is that ePocrates is working on a version for iPhone. You can access ePocrates online version on your iPhone right now. You can see what it looks like at the ePocrates site.

And yes, Dr. Volpe, if they port Unbound Medicine and Skyscape apps to iPhone, I'm gonna ask Santa for one.