DiversityNursing Blog

by Lynda Lampert

If you have an iPhone, iPad or other mobile device, you likely have a ton of apps taking up space. While some of those apps are likely tailored for fun (Angry Birds, Words with Friends), there’s no question that you can use your smartphone to serve your nursing career.

Of course, when you’re in your scrubs and ready to tackle the shift, using mobile apps to get information on drugs to anatomy to conditions is a no-brainer way to better treat your patients and keep reference materials easily accessible. Here’s a look at 20 top clinical apps for nurses in 2012!

Not all of these apps are free, but when you think about the great services they provide—such as keeping you on top of ever-changing medical data—it’s well worth the money.

from USA Today

COCOA BEACH, Fla. -- Yvonne Yacoub has been a nurse for half a century.

In 50 years, she has seen her profession redefine itself to meet the challenges of change, yet continue to struggle with shortages of new practitioners.

Yacoub, 72, who has worked at Cape Canaveral Hospital here for 36 years, is decades older than the 46-year-old average age of employed registered nurses. Some veteran nurses continue to work, but many more have hung up the scrubs for good or are counting the days until retirement.

"In several years, we will see many nurses semi-retire or retire completely," said Bonnie Rudolph, vice president/chief nursing officer for Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Fla., and Health First's chief nursing officer. "Nursing is a very physical job, and many nurses cannot continue to stand, lift patients and continue to work the required shifts."

As baby boomers age, the need for nurses will increase. Even though the number of licensed registered nurses in the United States has grown from 1.7 million in 1980 to 3.1 million today, the total is not enough to meet the expected demand. Registered nurses remain at the top of the list when it comes to employment growth, so hospital systems are being proactive in trying to retain older employees.

Recruiting more male nurses, now only 7 percent of the work force, could help ease the shortage.

Most male nurses, such as baby boomer Jim Carberry, a nurse supervisor in the intensive care unit at Holmes, enter the field as a second career. Carberry was a respiratory therapist for 20 years before becoming a nurse.

"I wouldn't say it's harder to be a nurse today. It's just different," Carberry said.

"With so much specialty nursing, we all have had to learn so many new ways of doing things," he said. "It's not just one nurse doing all of a patient's care in a day. It can be several with special skills."

While nursing schools are graduating highly skilled individuals, the experience of older workers is impossible to teach in a classroom.

Registered nurse Rebecca Madore, 23 on her third day on the job at Wuesthoff Medical Center -- Rockledge, Fla., acknowledges that the reality of nursing can be daunting.

"I learned a lot at school, but it's totally different when you're actually working the floor," she said.

Madore knew she wanted to be a nurse since she was a little girl, but for many of her colleagues, the profession is a career, not a calling.

"Each group's work ethic is different," said Suzanne Woods, vice president and chief nursing officer for Health First's community hospital division.

"The veterans and baby boomers feel almost total responsibility for the workplace and will come in on short notice and cover difficult shifts. This has always been their practice. The Gen X and Millenniums are more cognizant of home-and-life balance and strive to keep this in check."

Each generation also brings different skills, all needed to best serve patients.

"The younger nurses are very technologically advanced, but the older nurses are more connected with the patients," said Rosemary Walter, director of the medical/surgical unit at Wuesthoff in Rockledge.

Technological savvy, a given for new nursing grads and necessary for survival in the health care field today, can be difficult for older nurses to embrace.

"I feel we have an advantage over older generations in the new advancements of paperless systems, computer charting and the new diagnostics," said Michele McCray Miller, 26. "Throughout nursing school, we were constantly using simulated mannequins, computer programs and other electronic devices to master skills such as NG (nasogastric) tubes, catheters and IV skills. Older generations were not as lucky to have those resources in the classroom."

Allison Rogers has been a nurse for two years. Rogers' mother was a nurse. This member of Generation X had no doubts about her career choice.

"I know how important my job is, and I consider it an honor to care for patients the way I would want my family to be taken care of," Rogers said.

According to a recent survey conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), 71 percent of nurses are already using smartphones for their job. The survey included responses from 3,900 nurses and nursing students. About 66 percent of those nursing students surveyed said they use their smartphones for nursing school.

Overall, 85 percent of the nurses and nursing students said they want a smartphone app version of LWW’s Nursing 2013 Drug Handbook. Some 87 percent of those surveyed said they would want a smartphone app version of the text as well as a print version.

This month LWW plans to launch its first mobile app version of the handbook. The new forthcoming app includes nearly 900 drug monographs addressing more than 3,000 generic and brand name drugs. The app also offers a dosage calculator, pill images, detailed monographs and weekly drug updates. The app will work on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices once it launches later this month.

Earlier this year the New York Times reported on the effects of the increased adoption of smartphones among students at nursing schools: “The most profound recent change is a move away from the profession’s dependence on committing vast amounts of information to memory. It is not that nurses need to know less, educators say, but that the amount of essential data has exploded,” the Times wrote.

In January Massachusetts General Hospital also announced plans to equip its nurses with iPhones thanks to a recent deal with Voalte. Voalte’s offering combines high-definition voice calls, critical care alarms and presence-based text features and is intended for use by staff in acute care hospitals in the US and Canada — especially nurses. The company has helped a number of healthcare facilities equip their nurses with smartphones, including, Cedars-Sinai, Nebraska Medical Center, Texas Children’s, Heartland Health, Huntington Hospital, and Sarasota Memorial.

Are you a nurse who uses an iPhone? The iPhone is especially useful for nurses who are mobile, as this tool can help you stay in touch with medical teams and patients’ needs. Additionally, many new apps have been developed for the iPhone that fit a nurse’s lifestyle and professional requirements. Why carry 15 tools around with you when one will do the work for them all? Many of the iPhone apps listed below are not open source or free. And, many require wireless networks to operate. But, when you consider the cost of the tools you might need to simulate these apps, the app may be worth the investment.

The apps below are linked either to download sites or reviews with a link to the download site. They are listed in alphabetical order, a methodology that shows we don’t favor one app over another.

1. A.D.A.M. Symptom Navigator: If patients are using this app, maybe you should, too – easily find out what to do about any symptoms. Learn self care, when to go to the doctor, and when it is an emergency.
2. Bishop’s Score Calc: This obstetric calculator is used to calculate Bishop’s Score, a score used to assess probability of impending delivery as well as expected success rate if labor is induced. Expectant parents may also find this of use in aiding their obstetrician in determining whether induction of labor is reasonable.
3. Bio Dictionary: Bio Dictionary covers most of general biological terms. Two methods are offered for searching, and terms and their explanations are audible!
4. Cockcroft: Calculate the estimated clearance of creatinine (eCcr) with the creatinine serum rate (in mg/dL or in micromol/L). Weight can be either in kilogram or in pounds.
5. Epocrates Rx: One of the few free iPhone apps, Epocrates Rx includes a drug guide, formulary information and drug interaction checker. This product also includes continual free updates and medical news. Plus, this app resides on your device so you can look for information without wireless connections.
6. Eponyms for the iPhone: Downloadable through the iTunes store and courtesy of Pascal Pfiffner, this app brings the beautiful eponym database from Andrew J. Yee to your iPhone or iPod touch.
7. Glucose Charter: Glucose-Charter is a blood glucose, insulin and medication recording app for any iPhone. Patients can self-monitor, nurses can use it to check patients.
8. iAnesthesia: Case Logs: iAnesthesia: Case Logs allows all anesthesia providers to easily create, manage and backup case logs quickly in the operating room, leaving you with more free time when not at work.
9. iChart: Keep track of patients through this personal medical assistant. It stores everything from patient data to charts and lists of medications in a streamlined, organized fashion.
10. In Case of Emergency (ICE): You may not always practice in a hospital setting. If not, this app can provide you with all the information you need to contact emergency services in your location.
11. iRx: iRx is a pharmaceutical reference tool to get FDA information on specific drugs. This application is currently in beta status, but is fully functional.
12. Lab Tests: This laboratory test database is broken up into categories including, Blood Bank, Clinical Chemistry, Coagulation, Hematology, Serology, Immunology, Tumor Markers, Urinalysis and Therapeutic Drugs. Reference ranges and notes on the clinical significance of the test are given when indicated.
13. Medical Reference: Why memorize medical terminology when you can look it up on your iPhone?
14. Mediquations: Mediquations for the iPhone and iPod Touch brings over 201 common medical calculations and scoring tools to your fingertips with the simplicity and elegance you expect out of an iPhone application.
15. MIM Radiology: The MIM iPhone Application provides multi-planar reconstruction of data sets from modalities including CT, PET, MRI and SPECT, as well as multi-modality image fusion.
16. Mosby’s iTerms Flash Cards for Medical Terminology: Mosby’s iTerms Flash Cards for Medical Terminology, the premier study guide for mastering the prefixes, suffixes, combining forms, and abbreviations used to build medical terms, is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch.
17. NCLEX-RN Medications: Nursing students can cram for their NCLEX exam with this app that will help you study medications and conditions.
18. Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards: Using outstanding anatomical illustrations from Netter’s hugely popular Atlas of Human Anatomy (4th Edition), Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards allows you to carry the bestselling reference for human anatomy on your iPhone or iPod touch.
19. Netter’s Musculoskeletal Flash Cards: Master the musculoskeletal anatomy and pathology you need to know with 210 flash cards.
20. Netter’s Neuroscience Flash Cards: Enhance your understanding of key neuroscience concepts with Netter’s Neuroscience Flash Cards for iPhone and iPod touch.
21. Nursing Central: Nursing Central is the complete mobile solution for nursing produced by Unbound Medicine. The app includes premier disease, drug and test information by and for nurses.
22. Pocket First Aid Guide: Do you panic when caring for several people at once? Get a grip with this iPhone app. This is a first-aid guide for your iPhone that will help you treat anything from beestings to burns to eye injuries while you are within range of the Internet.
23. ReachMD: The ReachMD CME iPhone application is an easy-to-use and fully accredited Continuing Medical Education tool that gives healthcare practitioners a convenient way to earn free CME credits through their iPhone or iTouch.
24. ScribbleDoc: If you can’t read the good doctor’s writing, perhaps this app can help. Use your iPhone to scan the problem and ScribbleDoc should convert the image to text.
25. Skyscape Medical Resources: Available from the iTunes Apps Store, this app offers Outlines in Clinical Medicine, Archimedes – Medical Calculator, RxDrugs: Drug Dosing Tool and MedAlert for free with their download.