THESE days, when a nursing student at the University of Iowa fields a
question about a drug, "the answer is often, ‘I don’t know, but give me a
few seconds,’ and she pulls out her phone,” according to Joann Eland,
an associate professor there.
In just a few years, technology has revolutionized what it means to go
to nursing school, in ways more basic — and less obvious to the patient —
than learning how to use the latest medical equipment. Nursing schools
use increasingly sophisticated mannequins to provide realistic but
risk-free experience; in the online world Second Life, students’ avatars
visit digital clinics to assess digital patients. But the most profound
recent change is a move away from the profession’s dependence on
committing vast amounts of information to memory. It is not that nurses
need to know less, educators say, but that the amount of essential data
has exploded.
"There are too many drugs now, too many interactions, too many tests, to
memorize everything you would need to memorize,” says Ms. Eland, a
specialist in uses of technology. "We can’t rely nearly as much as we
used to on the staff knowing the right dose or the right timing.”
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