So I’m graduating from nursing school this Tuesday, and have a job lined up at a hospital starting next month. My SO has offered to get me a PDA as a graduation present, as I’ve seen nurses use them to look up drug info, etc. Having that information at my fingertips would be invaluable.
What kind should I get? Are there any that come with drug guides programmed in, or would I have to download one off the net? Any other useful programs like assessment or treatment guides I can get?
Thanks. 
There’s a lot of medical software out there - a local medical school bookstore might be a good place to look. I use Tarascon’s Pharmacopoeia (IANAN, but work in a hospital as a research assistant), and I see the company produces a number of other products for PDA, some of which are nurse-specific.
I bought myself the Palm T|X (Palm-brand product line here) but I know many other manufacturers make PDAs that use the Palm software.
First off: Do you want one that’s also a phone? I ask because the ones that aren’t phones are harder to find, and cost almost as much. They also aren’t much smaller (really they just lack the antenna,) so even if you have no need for a PDA-phone, don’t rule one out because it IS a phone. Just don’t use the phone function.
That being said, I had the Samsung i-730 (a PDA phone) and I love it. It has a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and also a touchscreen. The full keyboard is VITAL if you feel you’ll be doing a lot of messaging/email/data entry with it. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, also essential items on ANY PDA. It doesn’t have a camera, though, which is the only drawback. A camera can sometimes be useful in the medical field for, say, taking a picture of a nasty wound and sending it to a doc so he can look at it before he even gets to the hospital, or is off at a conference or something.
I would stay away from anything that runs the Palm OS. Windows Mobile is more common, and has a lot more software for it. Plus, if you use a Windows PC already, lots of things are going to be familiar. The current one is WM 6, but not all of them have 6 yet, but 5 is still really good. Some still just have 3, but if they are still being sold, then they will almost certainly be able to be upgraded to 5.