Columbia SoN introduces wireless technology as teaching tool.

Building upon its leadership in advanced practice nursing (APN) and informatics expertise, Columbia University School of Nursing is initiating an approach to reduce barriers to the provision of evidence-based, error-free care consistent with the best practices in health care. The 2000 IOM report concerning medical errors estimates that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospital and that the probelm is bad systems that need to be safer. Beginning with the incoming Entry-To-Practice (ETP-a combined degree program for non-nurses with degrees in other disciplines who wish to become APNs), each student has been provided with a hand held personal digital assistant (Palm m500) that will facilitate retrieval of information at the point of care, e.g. medication information.

Informatics competencies will be integrated throughout this curriculum ensuring that by the end of the first year of study, students will possess informatics competencies consistent with evolving practice competencies. Students will document a selected set of data elements sensitive to nursing care for all patient encounters in order to facilitate building evidence from practice. This project also provides an opportunity to review the specific nature of student clinical experiences to individualize future learning needs and for students to collect specific data about their experiences for professional credentialing requirements. Faculty will be able to track exactly what students do clinically and collect data which more precisely describes those experiences. They will also be able to emphasize error-free evidence based care, structured nursing languages and develop a base for coding and billing for APN services.

Columbia University School of Nursing faculty involved in this project under the overall direction of Sarah Cook, The Dorothy M. Rogers Professor of Clinical Nursing, are Suzanne Bakken, DnSc, Christine Curran, PhD, Judy Honig, EdD and Lesly Curtis, MS. Close collaborators include Michael Soupios from the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning as well as faculty from the College of Physicians and Surgeons Department of Medical Informatics.