Pendragon Forms Case Study

Family Medicine Residency Program

at the University of South Alabama

Residency Program Implements Longitudinal Rotations

The Family Medicine Residency Program at the University of South Alabama, College of Medicine is examining a new approach to residency rotations.  Traditionally, short rotations meant that the physicians couldn’t follow patients for long periods of time, and the intense schedule precluded spending time in community medicine, working with rural and underserved populations.

With the goal of solving these problems experienced by most residency programs, Dr. Allen Perkins and his colleagues at USA Family Practice incorporated mobile information management into a larger initiative to enrich physician training.

The cornerstone of the revised program is a longitudinal rotation schedule that allows residents to gain a wider range of experiences and spend time in more diverse settings.  However, the broader scope of the program, including new providers and locations, necessitated thorough documentation of resident activities.  As part of the program revisions, the department wanted to eliminate paper-based logs that generated additional administrative tasks and slowed down the flow of information.

Incorporating Mobile Information Management

Lightweight and inexpensive handheld computers provided an ideal platform for automating data collection and also allowed residents to easily access electronic reference manuals.  After receiving a recommendation from a colleague, Thomas Stroud, an instructional designer and application specialist at USA Family Practice, chose Pendragon Forms to create the mobile procedure logs.  By entering data into the forms at the point of service and synchronizing to a centralized database, resident data could be quickly and easily collected and would be available for review immediately following synchronization.  

Twenty five faculty, residents and staff collect data on Handspring Visor and Treo handhelds.  Third-year residents primarily use two forms, titled “Been There” and “Done That” to log time served at their appointed rotations and procedures performed, respectively.  Another form provides access to a read-only schedule that is automatically synchronized to the resident’s handheld.  In addition to documenting procedures, residents use their handhelds to store medical references and calculators.

Because Pendragon Forms applications use an Access database by default, it was very easy to share data with the existing Access databases.  The data is also used to generate web-based reports for residents and administrators that are accessible anywhere.

Learning from the Past and Planning for the Future

The first phase of a three-year development plan has been a learning experience for everyone involved.  Although residents were very receptive of the PDA’s, they were often too busy for 3-5 minute synchronizations.  By streamlining updates to reference applications, USA Family Practice reduced synchronization time to just a few seconds and made it convenient for residents to synchronize frequently.  To provide additional handheld user support, the department has developed an Intranet site that contains tutorials, instructions, links, updates and feedback via web-based reports.

The USA Family Practice department is very pleased with the Pendragon Forms applications and is looking forward to the next phase of the project.  Future plans include data analysis, mobilization of provider contact databases, and continued development of web-based reporting.

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