PDAs and laptops help nurses dispense drugs

Nurses are being given PDAs and laptops to help support their drug prescription duties as part of a six-month NHS pilot.

The NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) pilot is investigating how technology can bolster patient safety by giving nurses who dispense drugs better access to information.

The trial began in September at East Devon Primary Care Trust and Bolton Primary Care Trust.

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Barbara Shuttle, NHS national clinical lead for nursing, explained that while nurses now have prescribing rights, bringing in technology will support them by joining up the whole system.

Shuttle told silicon.com: "What we're hoping to identify in this pilot is [whether] by nurses having access to the technology - PDAs or laptops - it will actually support their prescribing decisions and make the prescribing much more meaningful. We previously gave nurses prescribing rights but not the whole package to go with it."

She said patients are becoming more aware and want more information, and bringing in technology to improve nurses' access to information should enable them "to complete this element of their care in a much more comprehensive and appropriate way".

"I do really believe the technology will assist nurses in making the whole process around prescribing much safer and much more patient-related."

The aim of the pilot is to explore the feasibility of new technologies, said Shuttle, adding: "We don't want to put technology in and then nobody uses it."

Nurses could use PDAs to log into medical systems as they go on their rounds, for instance giving them on-the-go access to resources such as the British National Formulary online, a database of prescription data. This in turn would improve patient safety and care, said Shuttle.

Mobile technology is "a must" when it comes to community nursing, she added: "The more projects we can have, to look at a wide range of mobile technologies, will enable us to actually implement some of this much more quickly."

Technology change is the driver for the massive £6.2bn NHS IT upgrade. Back in August, a Royal College of Nursing survey found anger among nurses at a perceived lack of consultation about these plans - with just 12 per cent of the 4,451 nurses surveyed saying they felt adequately consulted.

Shuttle said the "reconfiguration of the NHS" has "caused some slight difficulties" and added that enlisting the support of front-line nurses for technology change is vital. "A lot of nurses are using PDAs and computers in their private life," she explained. "But a hard core still use pen and paper."

Shuttle added: "It's a journey. We're not right at the beginning or the end - we're somewhere at the beginning of the middle."

In related news, the Department of Health is trialling an initiative to provide patients with more information so they may make better-informed health choices.

The plan is for doctors to dole out data as part of a patient's prescription - including relevant websites, phone helplines and support groups. The info initiative, which has funding of £1.35m, will initially focus on cancer and mental health and later on vulnerable older people. It will run until the end of 2007.