by Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Resident Editor
Botsford General Hospital
Farmington
Hills, MI
I’d like to get practical with this week’s edition of Residency Rap. Let’s
talk about white coats. Sounds boring, I know. More specifically I’d like to
discuss what you keep in your white coat and how you stay organized.
Through
my training I’ve seen students and residents
range in organization from Pig Pen
(Charley Brown reference in case you’ve forgotten your childhood), with
papers falling out all over the place, to Frasier Crane, immaculately organized.
I’d fall somewhere in between.
I used to carry a book made up a 4x6-inch
index cards with all my notes and information on it, but last year I acquired a
Palm Pilot PDA, which has been greatly helpful. I’d recommend using one to any
podiatric resident. In my experience the Palm is more compatible with our
medical software than the Pocket PC, which runs off of a Microsoft platform.
What have you experienced with PDAs? What software do you use? We’re probably
all familiar with Epocrates . For those of you without PDAs,
it’s a free drug index that also includes a handy formula calculator. It
additionally has a subscription service that includes diagnosis and laboratory
components. Perhaps the most useful feature is the drug interaction program.
Select the drugs that your patient is on, select a new one that you wish to
check against the others, and a complete list of possible interactions is
presented. This is probably the best medical program out there.
A pretty handy website is called
Merckmedicus , obviously Merck’s website, which includes
an online Physician’s Desk Reference and other useful medical content. However,
the most useful part is after the free registration, you can download a PDA
version of the Merck Manual, which is very helpful for Internal Medicine
rotations, etc. Go to the Mobile Merckmedicus tab at the top of the page and go
from there.
One other PDA program I’ve started using recently (and has little to do with
medicine) is called AvantGo . Basically, it’s a free
information service that allows you to download news and other information to
your PDA. You can for example put your Mapquest directions on you PDA or get the
latest recipes. You choose your “channels” and then every time you HotSinc your
PDA it updates the information.
What other useful information do you keep on your PDA? I’ll bet the residency
community could put together a compendium of useful medical websites and PDA
oriented websites that could make our lives that much easier. For example, write
in your favorite radiology or neurology website. Do you know a good website that
would help for Board reviews? What other PDA programs do you find useful?
Enlighten us!!
By the way, I’m still transferring the info from my index cards to my PDA.
That’s the bad part about PDAs, I guess.
What do you think? Let the residency
community hear your opinion…
SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO ME BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK
As with all PRESENT publications, all
issues of Residency Rap will be stored on the
PRESENT
website, so if you miss an issue or you want to refer back to a
prior issue, it'll be at:
http://www.podiatricresidency.com/residencyrap/
Talk to me,
