A few days before taking a test, Paige Stanfield listens to podcasts of all her class lectures while she’s out walking or folding laundry. Before attending a clinical lab, Cinnamon Cole watches a video of the skills that she’ll be learning.
Jennifer Gaile takes a minute to review a podcast demonstration of a clinical skill before being tested on it. While in a clinical class at a hospital, Tawna Low steps into the hall to look up drug information or medical terminology so she can answer her own or a patient’s questions.
Every day, more than 200 associate degree nursing students and about 50 dental hygiene students at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) are finding more ways to use their 64GB iPod Touch or 64GB wireless iPad devices. Last fall, thanks to a one-year grant from the college’s Office of Instructional Technology, each first-year nursing student received an iPod Touch — loaded with nursing resources. Second-year students received iPads.
The grant was inspired by the research of two GPC nursing faculty members: Wakita Rucker Bradford, a nursing community outreach and educational technology coordinator, and Susan Buchholz, an associate professor of nursing. Rucker Bradford, RN, MSN, CPN, and Buchholz, RN, MSN, started their research about five years ago when they made videos of clinical skills that students could watch at home. As mobile technology evolved, so did their research.
“A year ago, I bought my own iPod Touch and put the Nursing Central apps on it,” Rucker Bradford said. “I now have an iPad, and I can’t believe I lived without these devices before. When I went to nursing school in the ’90s, we had to carry heavy books to clinicals and labs.”
She believes that having access to so many resources in a hand-held mobile device would benefit all nursing students.
“As future nurses, they will need to be techno-savvy and continuously find ways to give better care,” Rucker Bradford said. “Any time I can put technology and nursing together, I’m happy.”
While Georgia Perimeter nursing students can still utilize traditional textbooks, the iPod Touches and iPads came equipped with Nursing Central apps that replace essential reference books, such as Davis’s Drug Guide and Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary.
“The Taber’s dictionary alone is 2,788 pages. When you put all the books together, the stack is a foot high,” Rucker Bradford said. “Our students can now carry all the same information around in their pockets.”
Georgia Perimeter’s Instructional Technology Services provides students with training. As part of the research program, Rucker Bradford and Buchholz conduct weekly surveys to see which applications students are using and that they find most helpful. They also answer questions and trouble-shoot problems.
It’s no surprise that the devices have been a hit with students.
“The students are using them at home, in the classroom and in patient settings — and loving them,” Rucker Bradford said.
Stanfield didn’t even know what an iPad was when she got one.
“I’m not all that tech-savvy,” said Stanfield, who worked in business and stayed home to raise her children for 12 years. “Nursing school is hard, but I know I’m in the right place.”
Stanfield began using an iPad to listen to podcasts of classroom lectures. Then she started looking up diagnoses and drug information.
“I thought it would take me all year to learn how to use it, but other students kept encouraging me,” she said. “They told me I would really love it once I got everything set up. I’m glad I stuck with it. It’s a very good tool for learning.”
Geri Riley, 46, and her husband ran a small business until it dried up during the recession. When she entered the GPC nursing program, she had to make several adjustments — and not just going to back school after so many years.
“I’m not very tech-savvy and I certainly didn’t expect to receive an iPod Touch when I enrolled in nursing school, but I’m liking it more every day,” she said. “The more I use it, the more I’ve come to rely on it.”
Riley has become a big fan of her iPod Touch.
“I can look up a drug diagnosis or listen to a lecture while sitting in traffic,” she said. “It’s invaluable in the clinical setting and when I’m doing my homework. I can look up what I need to know right away.”
Gaile feels lucky when she sees other nursing students lugging around big drug books and dictionaries in the hospital.
“We carry all that in our pockets, and it’s made my life so much simpler,” Gaile said.
Cole calls her device a “godsend.” She can stand outside a patient’s room and quickly look up the drugs he or she is taking and find the correct dosages, pronunciations and possible side effects.
“You can be with a patient and answer his question at a touch,” said Low, 43, who always wanted to be a nurse and is now seizing the opportunity.
Although nurses’ clinical knowledge is broad and deep, it’s impossible for them answer every question off the top of their heads.
“Sometimes patients ask us things that we can’t answer immediately. With this device, you don’t have to leave the room to look something up. You can do it right at the patient’s side,” Rucker Bradford said.
Michael Douglas, 45, chose nursing as a second career. He’s glad he doesn’t have to lug books like veteran nurses who went to school before the digital explosion.
“The difference between college 20 years ago and now is the incredible availability of information at your fingertips — literally,” he said. “I cannot imagine doing clinical rotations without this tool. Some of my nursing instructors in the hospital have asked to borrow it when they needed to look something up. It’s a tool I could use for the rest of my career.”
GPC students will give the devices back when they graduate, but Rucker Bradford and Buchholz are exploring low-cost ways for future students to have access to them, either through rental or grant assistance. They are seeking grants to expand the pilot program to all nursing students, Rucker Bradford said.
Their initial research findings for the program are positive.
“We know that student grades were higher in their nursing fundamentals course last semester,” Rucker Bradford said. “We’re going to nursing conferences around the country to present our research.
“Some programs are just waking up to the possibility of using this kind of technology. We can share our experiences.”
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