By Bruce K. Dixon, Chicago Bureau
Dr. Arnold Jay Simon doesn't go anywhere without his personal digital assistant, commonly known as a PDA, and because of the many uses the internist has devised for it, the acronym could easily stand for “physician's digital assistant.”
“I use my PDA for everything,” said Dr. Simon, who has a geriatrics practice that includes caring for about 45 nursing home patients in Palm Springs, Fla.
There's no need to buy a handheld personal computer with all the wireless Internet bells and whistles, he added. As long as it has a scheduler and alarm reminder, you're good to go.
“Being an office-based primary care physician responsible for nursing home residents, I've found my PDA most useful in keeping track of patient international normalized ratios, which [are] an important part of nursing home care,” he said in an interview. Forgotten INRs “can have disastrous consequences for patients on Coumadin.” After ordering Coumadin, and requesting a repeat patient INR 2 weeks later, he enters into his PDA the patient's name and “INR” in a time slot on the date of the ordered test, then sets a PDA alarm.
When the alarm sounds, the screen opens and displays the information. Dr. Simon taps the screen with a stylus to acknowledge the reminder and calls the nursing home, or, if he's busy with a patient, taps “snooze” and the alarm replays its tune a short time later.
“Once I have given the repeat patient INR order, I can press 'go to,' which will bring me to the scheduler, [into which] I copy the line containing the patient's name and 'INR,' and paste those data into the next scheduled time slot,” he explained, adding that using the call schedule and the “find” function of the PDA allows that patient's previous and scheduled INR days to be retrieved easily and quickly.
“Or if I'm working in the hospital and want a patient's pending lab results, I just put his or her name into the scheduler and set it to remind me in an hour or so when I'm back in my office and have access to a computer,” Dr. Simon said in an interview.
The physician's PDA also makes a great idea bank. Instead of putting his thoughts into the memo file, Dr. Simon prefaces his entries with the word “idea” and stores them in his scheduler for easy retrieval using the “find” function.
“The PDA is well designed for idea storage and as a reminder because this handy device is with me during waking hours and goes off at convenient scheduled times. But don't be misled by its small size. … These are wonderfully powerful computers with untapped potential for your practice,” he said.