[rwolfley]

Hi,

I am not a nurse, but I am married to one. I need some advice and have never posted here before. My wife has requested a PDA for christmas. She is a nurse manager for a medical practice but still does a lot of patient contact. I am wondering what type of PDA you all use and can you get it preloaded with medical stuff??? and what is that stuff? and if you cant get it preloaded, where can I get that stuff?. What is the have to have software packages?

My wife does so much for me and I want to give her a nice christmas present. Any suggestions would be helpful to me.

Thank you and as a civilian, I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who dedicate your lives to helping others in need. I have so much respect for your proffession. Have a wonderful and safe holiday.

Rick

[MeghanRN]

rwolfley:

Thank you for your kind words. I know I, and everyone else here, appreciate it greatly!

As for PDA's, what a nice idea for your wife. I have one, and I love it. I got it for christmas as well when I was in school. I have a Palm One Tungsten T5- which you can get from amazon.com, or palmone.. (which might be a little more expensive)..But I love it, and its a really good and easy to use PDA. Now mine was around $400..but you can get ones for cheaper depending on your budget.

My school used a website called www.skyscape.com where you can purchase all of the PDA programs you will ever need, and they run about the same price as a book. I recommend starting off with a drug guide, and maybe a medical dictionary ( Davis's Drug Guide, and Tabers). These are the 2 items that are most useful right off the bat.

I did a little searching on the site for you, and under products they have some special deals- PDA's with program bundles included (which have some great looking programs included). I dont know how good these PDA's are, but their pricing was reasonable and you could research them on Amazon to find out what people think of them. there is a Palm TX on the site that looks good, for 299 + 4 free programs.

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions please feel free to ask me!

Thanks again for your kind words

-Meghan

[JRapha'sRN]

I would recommend a basic PDA with a SD card for extra memory. I would load it with one or two programs (I have the RN bundle from Skyscape and use it daily) or get her a gift certificate http://www.skyscape.com/estore/giftc...cateintro.aspx and let her pick the programs. Look at the links on this forum and find some good free programs and she'll be thrilled. (MedCalc is the most useful free program I have--I use it every shift.) Also, consider getting her a screen protector and/or case. I was nervous about bringing my palm to work before I had those.

[Princess74]

I have the PalmOne Lifedrive, its the best purchase I've ever made. Cost $500.00 but it is worth EVERY penny. I bought mine at Office Depot, along with some extra screen protectors. It comes with a soft case, although I would recommend a hard case also in case of drops. It has enough memory so that you don't ever have to worry about adding any, however you can add to it if you ever need to (but you wont). Has a built in voice recorder that is great for voice memos or long lectures. Also has many, many, many other features. There are lots great free programs that you can download as well as tons that you can purchase. I would get Tabers and Davis drug guide to start out. Here is the link, if you would like check it out. http://www.palm.com/us/products/mobi...ers/lifedrive/

[CardioTrans]

I have a Tungsten T5. I bought it at Circuit City for about $400. Pricy, but well worth it. It has as much memory as my desktop. I highly recommend, as one other did, the hard case. It is about $20. It protects my pda from all the hard knocks.

As far as software.... a drug guide, definitely. I got mine off skyscape. Since she is a manager of a medical office there are also programs that she can download that deal with insurance billing and coding and patient tracking.

www.skyscape.com
www.medspda.com
www.pdamd.com
http://www.fppda.com/free.html has some free software
http://docmd.com/pdasoftware/ has tons of links for programs

Those are just some of the links that I found quickly. Hope this helps.