10 Smartphone Apps Every Nurse Needs
Increasingly we’re living in a mobile world. The Pew Research Center reported that 95% of Americans own a cellphone of some kind — compared to 35% in 2011. With that, the dependency on smartphones has increased. One-in-five American adults rely solely on their smartphone for internet and do not have a traditional home broadband service.
With this rise in dependence on our smartphones has also come a rise in smartphone apps. But of the 2 million apps in the Apple Store and 3.8 million in the Android Google Play Store, how can you be sure you’re downloading the right apps for what you need?
We’ve pulled together a list of the 10 smartphone apps that every nurse needs to help you narrow your search. We’ve included five medical apps, but also five non-medical apps focused on making your life easier. All apps are available for both iPhone and Android so regardless of your device, you can download whichever (or all!) apps that speak to you.
Let’s start with the five medical apps every nurse needs:
1. NCSBN: Medication Flashcards
This app provides thousands of flashcards to help nurses master drug information when preparing for their NCLEX exam. While it is intended to help students study for the qualifying exam, it’s a great tool to have in your pocket throughout your nursing career for easy reference and review.
The app provides common examples of drugs along with basic descriptions and uses. It groups them into categories and includes common effects of each drug on patients. Having a full medication library on your phone is a great resource that can help nurses at any stage of their career.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
2. NurseGrid: Manage Your Schedule
Developed by nurses to help manage the scheduling process, NurseGrid allows you to manage your schedule across multiple worksites and communicate with other nurses in your units. With options to swap or give away shifts, you can coordinate your schedule without any back-and-forth over text or calls.
Nursing Managers can also use the app to manage the nurses in their unit and oversee all scheduling that happens. By keeping all of the scheduling in one place, the app helps make sure nothing gets lost in communication and everyone can see what shifts they are scheduled to work and plan ahead for their week.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
3. Epocrates: Point Of Care Medical Applications
Epocrates is a drug referencing app that streamlines searches for any information on prescription drugs, drug interactions, or physicians who can prescribe those drugs. Its extensive drug database allows you to search by generic name, brand name or a list of more specific conditions. For specific drugs, you can find treatment options and how the drug may interact with different diagnosis.
The app also contains information on specific diseases including lab guides coding, clinical practice guidelines and alternative medications. This is helpful for nursing students studying for exams as well as to help nurses ensure they are providing proper treatment during practice.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
4. Nursing Central: Reference A Collection Of Resources
Nursing Central combines five different reference resources with a number of valuable tools to provide a comprehensive location for nurses to find answers for any question they may have. They provide access to drug guides, disease and disorder descriptions, medical dictionaries, lab and diagnostic test information, and medical calculators.
The app has a function that allows you to input symptoms and provides a list of possible conditions. Having a mobile resource like this with you on the job can help make sure that you can get any question answered on the fly.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
5. Medscape: Point-Of-Care Decision Making
Medscape, while primarily a news site online, has a medical reference app that provides drug information and a disease reference tool, while also providing access to medical news.
One of the most well known functions is the Drug Interaction Checker, which allows up to 30 inputs and will check interactions between them.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
Moving onto the non-medical apps, we’ve found apps that are focused on helping you in your busy day. Whether it’s for task tracking, meditation or even investing (passive income!) these apps don’t have to be medical-specific to make a difference in your life.
6. Todoist: To-Do List And Task Manager
Nurses are always constantly in “go mode” and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the things you need to do in a day. One minute you remember but when you actually have time to get to that task, you’ve forgotten what it was you needed to do.
Having a task manager app is a great way to keep a running list of everything so that you can easily reference it when needed. Building a habit of making sure to jot down a task when you think of it will make sure you have a running list and never forget to do something important!
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
7. Headspace: Meditation And Mindfulness
Nurses are always working and thinking about their patients and often have a hard time finding a minute for themselves. Using an app like Headspace which has tailored meditations and mindfulness exercises helps you build a habit that will give you time to focus on your most important patient: yourself.
Headspace coaches you to improve on specific needs and while it may take a few days to get into the habit of it, once you get in the rhythm you’ll find that every day is made better by a few minutes of meditation.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
8. Pocket: Manage Reading Lists
As a nurse, you’re constantly reading and learning new information — whether it’s a scientific article, a news piece, or a blog post with interesting content. But you’re so busy throughout your day that you may not have enough time to read as much as you want.
Pocket allows you to save any article that catches your eye in one place so that when you do have time to do a bit of reading, all of your articles are stored in one place. You can even read your articles offline, so no need to worry about being connected to the network if you decide to read during a wifi-less commute.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
9. HabitBull: Daily Goal Tracker
We’re always in the habit of wanting to break or build up a habit. Whether you want to start sleeping earlier every day or want to build a 30 minute workout in your schedule, a habit tracking app is one of the best ways to get yourself on track.
HabitBull encourages you to achieve your daily goals by allowing you to mark off successful days and showing you trends of days you’ve achieved your goals. You can visibly see the amount of progress you’ve made and where you can continue to improve. There are also graphs to help you visualize your progress so that you can strive for a constantly upward trend.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
10. Robinhood: Invest For Free.
For nurses interested in exploring avenues for passive income, one of the best methods of is investing. Whether it’s stocks, ETFs, or cryptocurrencies, Robinhood allows you to choose what you want to buy and charges no fee.
The easy-to-use interface shows the overall trend of the stock and the current buying price to give you a general sense for whether or not it’s a good stock to buy. It will also help you keep track of how much you’re gaining or losing on each stock to help inform when it’s time to sell.
Download here: Apple Store | Android Google Play Store
There you have it! We’ve listed 10 of the best medical and non-medical smartphone apps for nurses to help you decide what apps you should use your highly coveted storage space on.
We hope that you find some of these apps useful or have gotten inspired to search for other apps in the app store that fit your needs!
And while you’re in the mood for searching, click here to start another job search on Nomad!We’re constantly updating the search function on the platform and adding new jobs every day — so check back to see if there are new jobs that fit your preferences!
Happy searching!
The Nomad Team
nomadhealth.com
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