Drug Guides for PDA: Mosby's & Davis's
How many errors could be alleviated if more nurses looked up their meds?! However, since on most units, medbooks are only available in the medroom and a medbook is too bulky to carry in most cases, the sad fact is that meds are not looked up. My first PDA drug guide was Mosby's, which I have had for over a year; I now also own Davis's. I cannot tell you how many nurses have asked me to quickly look up their meds to see check on dosages, adverse reactions, or nursing considerations. More than one time the meds have been held or orders questioned as a result, but had I not been in the room, the med likely would have been given. How nice it is to have an entire med book electronically available in your pocket, searchable by both generic and brand names (no more flipping through indexes trying to find the generic name), always accessible.So now you are convinced of the necessity of owning a PDA drug guide, but which one should you buy. Like I said, I have owned Mosby's Drug Guide for over a year and have just recently purchased Davis. I have found Davis's drug guide to be more thorough. Davis is also easier to navigate. Both Davis and Mosby have drop-down menus to quickly jump to the desired section of the med-entry (i.e. mechanism of action, adverse reactions/side effects, compatibility, nursing considerations, client education, etc); however since Davis has the content divided into more subsections, it is quicker to navigate to the desired content. So, my personal choice is Davis; however I do not think you would be remiss to purchase either of these. I only encourage you to move out of the hard-copy med-book and to the PDA version.
You may also like to know that you can integrate many other helpful resources such as lab value guides (such as Pagana & Pagana's Diagnostic Laboratory Test Reference, ISBN 0323033954; or the one included in Medical-Surgical Nursing Clinical Companion, ISBN 0323031994), medical dictionaries (Like Taber's, ISBN 080361408X), and more. I hope that more nurses are walking around with entire reference libraries in their pockets resulting in better practice, improved patient outcomes, and reduced errors.
