Professional monitoring and critical incident reporting using personal digital assistants

Objective: To assess the practicality of using personal digital assistants (PDAs) for the collection of logbook data, procedural performance data and critical incident reports in anaesthetic trainees. Design: Pilot study. Setting: Two tertiary referral centres (in Victoria and New Zealand) and a large district hospital in Queensland. Participants: Six accredited Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) registrars and their ANZCA training supervisors. Interventions: Registrars and supervisors underwent initial training for one hour, and supervisors were provided with ongoing support. Main outcome measures: Reliable use of the program, average time for data entry and number of procedures logged. Results: ANZCA trainees reliably enter data into PDAs. The data can be transferred to a central database, where they can be remotely analysed before results are fed back to trainees. Conclusions: This technology can be used to monitor professional performance in ANZCA trainees.