Guest Blogger: Joseph Pickett
If you own a smartphone, and who doesn’t these days, you probably have a lot of apps on there, including plenty of games. There is nothing wrong with that, but you can also use your iPhone or Android phone to help with your nursing career.
From apps that help you study for your nursing board exams, to apps that help you to identify pills, there are plenty of apps that can help you to become more skilled nursing professional.
Here 11 great Apps for nurses.
#1 Davis Mobile NCLEX-RN Med-Surg
Are you a current nursing student? Then you are going to need to study for your board exams. This great app will provide you with questions to answer while you are watching TV, waiting between your nursing classes, on the bus, etc. A few years ago, no one would have imagined that you could study for your board exams on your smartphone in your downtime. But those days have arrived!
#2 Pill Identifier – Produced by Drugs.com
Let’s say you are on your clinical rounds and your patient has to take six different medications. But he drops his pills on the floor and you have no idea which pill is for what. If you are going to call the pharmacy to get new pills, you have to be able to know what each pill is for. This wonderful pill identifier app allows you to look up pills by common features so that you know which ones need to be reordered.
This is an electrocardiogram rhythms interpreter. It contains more than 90 high-res images of ECGs, so it is a great resource for the nurse who needs to frequently interpret rhythms. As most nurses who work in this area know, remembering these rhythms can be difficult so this app makes remembering them a lot easier.
#4 Fast Facts for Critical Care
This app offers clinical nurses in-depth knowledge that is essential when you are working in a critical care unit at your hospital or medical facility. This app is based upon books written by critical care expert Kathy White. It includes very helpful information on how to manage sepsis, heart failure and more than 15 classes of critical care drugs.
Lab values usually come with any lab report you get these days as a clinical nurse. However, sometimes you are not at your PC so that you know the specific value of certain lab results. This handy app will help you stay up to date on the lab values, including ABGs, immunology and lumbar puncture values.
#6 MRSA eGuideline
If you are a nurse in a hospital these days, you know how big of a problem MRSA can be. You need to have all of the latest information at your fingertips about how to prevent your patients from contracting this serious condition. This app deals with vancomycin dosing, key drug information and how to handle MRSA in children and infants.
#7 Pocket Body
For many nursing students, memorizing all of the names of muscles and bones is one of the toughest parts of nursing school. With this helpful app, you will have all of the names and structures available to you go over any time you have a few free minutes.
This is a comprehensive heart sound database for your smartphone. It can be difficult to know which sounds are most critical when you are listening to someone’s heart with your stethoscope. This app has a comprehensive collection of the most common and less common heart sounds so that you can be more effective in identifying them in your patients.
#9 Davis’s Drug Guide 2013
This is your go-to information source when you need to look up the actions of any medication. This app is going to cost you more than some others, but it is made by Davis, which has a great reputation in the medical field, and most nurses find it is well worth the price.
#10 Anesthesia Drugs
If you work in an operating room, or you are trying to become a nurse anesthetist, this is a handy app to help you to calculate proper drug dosages. All you need to do is to enter the eight and the proper dose is given for you to administer many types of anesthesia drugs.
This is a very helpful medical diagnostic tool that is designed for both nursing students and professionals, as well as physicians. You can put a symptom into your smartphone, and it will provide you with many of the possible diseases that possess that symptom.
No matter if you are a nursing student or are a highly experienced nurse, we think that you should be able to use all of these awesome apps to become better at what you do.
About the Author
Joseph Pickett is a staff writer for a online masters in public health portal. The site features a wealth of information about courses, programs, jobs and careers for physicians, nurses and other professionals interested in public health. Most recently they highlighted 130+ Super Cool Free Online Public Health Courses & Certificates.
TheNerdyNurse hi can u please include windows apps too. thx!
SuzanneReichertCromer I bet ATI has a great NCLEX review app. They made some great content when I was in nursing school. And you totally can’t go wrong with Davis Drug Guide.
@Cyndy I totally understand. I try to include both versions when I write reviews. This particular one was a guest post.
I’ll make sure you keep in mind Android users on my next app round up. 🙂 thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I wish reviews like this would include more Android apps. Not everyone carries an iPhone.
My school used ATI so I had access to their NCLEX app and I used it faithfully all through nursing school. I also had the Davis Drug Guide and found it very useful as well. Especially if I knew I might get asked questions about specific drugs during clinicals.