Healthcare professionals need accurate information to best care for their patients and they need it quickly. Recent years have seen the rise of tools that can be used at the bedside or point of care, most of them geared towards medicine. This newly published case study focuses on developing an evaluation rubric for point-of-care tools (PoCTs) for nursing. This project compared five tools and found no one tool strongly met all criteria. However, it was noted that strengths and weaknesses could be seen. The authors recommend using the rubric when making collection development decisions.
Additionally, a followup study was conducted which surveyed nurses to compare nursing preferences and perceptions of three key point-of-care tools. Findings suggest that organizations need to survey their nurses to determine preferences and that more research is needed to understand how point-of-care tools can better meet the information needs of registered nurses.
Annie Nickum, MLIS, AHIP, is a fellow of the 2020 Research Training Institute (RTI), and this project was the focus of her research. The RTI project was possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (RE-95-17-0025-17).