AUTHOR: Ravindra V. Prasad, MD

AFFILIATION: Department of Anesthesiology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC  27599-7010

BACKGROUND: In the face of increasing clinical workloads, an efficient method for selecting and distributing educational material is necessary to facilitate education and training. The widespread familiarity with the internet and the increasingly common use of hand held personal digital assistants (PDA’s) amongst these physicians provide a ready means for supplementing education in anesthesiology. Our goal was to develop a web site that could be created and maintained with minimal support and time requirements; that would provide residents a single place to look for educational material; that would provide all anesthesia care providers with information unique to the department; and that would be easily accessible to Palm organizers and other PDA’s.

METHODS: Using freely available software (Netscape Composer, AvantGo) we created a web site (http://www.unc.edu/~rvp/RP_Anesthesia) that could easily be downloaded to a variety of PDA’s. Content will be provided by departmental faculty and residents.

CONCLUSIONS: The web site has only recently been established; format and content continues to evolve. With continued support, it will become a source of information useful not only to residents in training, but also to nurse anesthetists and attending anesthesiologists trying to keep their knowledge bases current.