SHould I buy a PDA for anesthesia school?

If you are going to a front loaded program, wait until clinicals start, and buy then. (just set the money aside now).

If you have a integrated program, consider buying it now.

I have not used mine, for more than a calculator since school started. I imaine I will use it more when clinicals start in August.

Palm OS, it seems more programs are out there (but the big name programs are available for both formats, I like the Sony Clie wish I would have bought one instead of the m500

I use mine constantly, Visor Prism is what I bought but I sort of wish i had bought the Sony. I had trouble with seeing a black and white model it in a darkened OR so I traded for a color version. I have a couple of drug guides ( epocrates and Sota's), Med calc, Riley Kidometer, Gasworks, Barash's Clinical Anesthesia (I like the paper handbook far more), and a bunch of other generic stuff. I keep it with me always, floor calls, OB, etc but it hasn't replaced my Barash handbook and the "blue book" most schools reccomend you put together.

Hey Anthony,

I had the same question before starting school as you did. I am fairly adept at computers, but didn't know a thing about PDAs. In the end, I decided that I would buy a PDA a few months before starting school, and play with it a bit, so I knew how to use.

This turned out to be a fairly successful approach. I found it pretty cool for ICU. The first semester of my program is almost purely didactic, so I haven't had a lot of time to use it clinically yet. But the address book and phone list is very handy. I also use Epocrates a bit for pharmacology. Plus, it's a very nice, although somewhat expensive calculator.

Once I start clinicals, I'm sure it will become increasingly valuable. I'll be putting all the information for my "brain book" on my Palm and also plan to be tracking my cases.

As for recommendations, I bought a Sony Clie as recommended here. Their price hasn't decreased all that much in the last 8 months. The Clie comes with 16 megs of memory, which is very handy and has a colour screen, which you should really get unless your budget makes that absolutely impossible. The SJ30, which I purchased, does not come with a MP3 player, but the SJ33 does. The latest Clie models come with digital cameras and all the bells and whistles, but last I checked ran in the $600+ range.

Your other option of course is the Pocket PCs, which I know nothing about.

Check with your program director, some programs supply PDA when you start.

I just purchased a Sony Clie this week. It's the Nx60. It has the color screen that you can turn around and it has a built in keyboard *I LOVE this* It's got 16mb of internal RAM (?) memory stick slot, mp3, pictures, video, and is wirless LAN capable, and it also uses the new Palm OS 5. It's on sale this week at CompUSA for 299.99. Check it out if you are currently in the market for one! I love mine!
Brett