Development of a Personal Digital Assistant Application for Pharmacy Documentation
Keywords:
Interventions, Student, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), TechnologyAbstract
As the role of pharmacists becomes more patient-focused and market pressures demand increased accountability of pharmacists, the importance of documenting pharmacists professional activities related to patient care becomes paramount. Efficient means by which to document and transmit such activities of pharmacists have not been fully developed or are not universally applied in professional practice. This paper describes a method for documenting pharmacy student interventions during experiential rotations with personal digital assistants (PDA). The pharmacy student documentation system (PSDSq) requires a “point-and-click” action by the user on a pre-programmed electronic form that documents common reasons for interventions, actions taken, recommendations provided, and clinical service provide. Also collected is the time involved, the outcomes of recommendations, what personnel initiated the intervention, medications involved, and the potential impact on patients’ health related quality of life. The use of PDA applications as described within this paper embody the spirit of the recommendations from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports, the Leapfrog Group, and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems being implemented. The PSDSq and other computer technologies have the potential to increase communication among members of the healthcare team to achieve defined therapeutic outcomes for patients while documenting the various contributions of the respective providers in the delivery of quality healthcare.
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