Saturday, January 23, 2010

Hospital-issued PDAs and smartphones

Do hospital-based residency programs still issue PDAs and smartphones? At one time, one of the major benefits associated with certain residency programs included:
  • Laptop and/or PDA issued by the hospital
Now that most medical school graduates are probably entering residency programs with their own laptops and PDAs or smartphones, what are hospitals doing?

When my wife was in her residency at the University of Pennsylvania, they let her use a Dell laptop for 3 years. At the end of those 3 years, she had to either "buy" that laptop or she could return it to the department. We had enough computers around the house, so she simply returned her laptop.

So what are residency programs doing these days? It would seem silly to me if they're still issuing standalone PDAs to their residents who probably already have iPhones, BlackBerrys, Androids, etc. 

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