More on Rutgers and a couple of very useful links

At the Rutgers Conference one of the outstanding presentations I attended was entitled: "Using Blogs and Wikis to Promote Community, Collaboration, and Creativity", presented by JoAnne Herman, PhD, RN and Vera Polyakova-Norwood, MEd from the University of South Carolina College of Nursing. They have incorporated both blog and wiki use into graduate and undergraduate nursing courses with resounding success.

Great visual to compare working by email and working by wiki is at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lafabriquedeblogs/2431125685/
It was posted on Beth's Blog associated with an article called "Working Wikily"
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/06/working-wikily.html

Another presentation that answered questions I have been dealing with was entitled "Reaching Digital Nirvana: A Paradigm to Automate Clinical Documentation and Transform Clinical Practice" by Jim Cato, EdD(c), MSN, RN, CRNA, MHS. His presentation dealt with the advantages of electronic documentation but what I found most interesting was his reponse to the question I asked about the prevelance of approved nursing taxonomies actually being used in the clinical setting. His response was that nobody was doing it well and that until a single standard is defined, and vendors actively incorporate those features in response to customer demands, it won't be a reality.

Mary Anne Rizzolo, EdD, RN, FAAN of the NLN presented "The NLN 2006 Survey of Informatics Competencies: Findings and Implications". There are far too many nurses who are unprepared or underprepared in informatics competencies. This applies to nurses in practice, nursing faculty and nursing students. Read the NLN position statement: Preparing the Next Generation of Nurses to Practice in a Technology-rich Environment: An Informatics Agenda, Approved May 9, 2008 on the NLN site.

Via the Work Literacy Blog: http://www.workliteracy.com/the-crap-test

The Crap Test for Internet resources: Currency, Reliability, Authority, Purpose. Just the mnemonic to assist my informatics students to critically evaluate Internet resources for healthcare!

Patrick Scollin, EdD, MT, CLS from the University of Massachusettes at Lowell presented "Bridging the Gap Between the PDA and Tablet in Healthcare: the Ultra Mobile Portable Computer at the Bedside". He described a small study where nursing students were given a 1 lb pc with a keyboard and stylus loaded with several reference materials to use during clinicals. After using the UMPC they had an opportunity to use a PDA loaded with similar software. To my surprise they preferred the PDA citing ease of use, speed, and battery life.

For the past year I've been following the development of low cost UMPCs starting with the One Laptop Per Child program. These have a full qwerty keyboard for touch typing (not thumb typing), wi-fi and a full suite of software. Intially running on Linux, some are now appearing with Windows Home. Asus was the first with the eeePC http://event.asus.com/eeepc/microsites/en/index.htm. Now contenders are appearing from HP (HP 2133), Acer (Acer Aspire One), Dell and MSI (MSI Wind). All weigh about 2lbs, and range in price from $299 and up. These small notebooks have been dubbed "netbooks".