Published by Lookforzebras
Nurses need the latest clinical knowledge and effective communication to provide optimal care for the patients. Accessing electronic practice guidelines and medication information is an integral part of a nurse’s daily work.
With numerous apps available in the market, you have to pick and choose the best apps which can provide the best solutions for you. Mobile Applications help nurse practitioners to streamline their work and retrieve the latest information to provide the best patient care. They also provide nurses the opportunity to improve and optimize communication with other healthcare professionals.
Some apps are available for free, and others have a basic version to which you can subscribe. You may have to subscribe to a premium version if you want to access the premium features. Some apps are deemed essential for Nurse Practitioners. In such cases, certain apps may be paid for by the hospitals. Others may have to be subscribed to by the Nurse Practitioners. This is especially true in cases where the apps add value to their continuing education.
Tangible Benefits Of Online Medical Apps
- Efficiency and focus on time management
Today with varying demands on a medical professional’s time, the time they spend with the patients in reviewing their history and details of the medical problems is dwindling. Nowadays, doctors spend barely 15 minutes with their patients. Nurse practitioners are expected to assist the attending physicians to make optimal use of their time by using medical apps. Nurse Practitioners help to identify the patients’ healthcare requirements and update their electronic health records. If you are a Nurse Practitioner and regularly use medical apps in your daily routine, you can optimize your time during patient visits.
- Accuracy
Accuracy is paramount to a physician. Access to electronic health records during a patient visit is vital, and using mobile apps helps ensure that information is at your fingertips. This way, physicians avoid confusing paper records and prevent the wrong diagnosis. Medical apps enable hospitals to avoid contingent liabilities due to legal suits.
Mobile apps also allow doctors and nurses to solicit a second opinion available on the app without delays. It enables you to access online medical resources to research your patient’s condition. This facilitates a more accurate diagnosis, eliminates treatment errors, and helps the hospital avoid medical malpractice and other legal suits.
- Convenience
Instant access to the patient’s vital information is another advantage of using such online medical apps. The instantly available information precludes the requirement for the nurses to search through big reference books and run in search of paper files to access patient data. All you need is access to a smartphone, and information is available immediately at your fingertips. Medical apps are also easy to use. Medical apps provide detailed information for complicated cases.
These apps also help in the continuing education of nurses and other medical personnel. Nurse practitioners can access these apps on their smartphones, tablets, or computers anywhere. As the apps are online, you can access them from your office, work area, or home. The apps streamline patient care and avoid mishaps. Some apps also provide speech recognition for hands-free documentation. Nurses are warned about a patient’s deteriorating condition through certain apps.
Top 10 Medical Apps That Are Most Useful To Nurse Practitioners
1. Medscape
It is an app that enables nurse practitioners to stay updated. It offers medical news, drug information, Medical Calculators, and continuing education opportunities in education. There is a wealth of clinical data in one place that facilitates point of care decisions. Medscape app provides the following:
- Updated information on various medical opportunities
- Guidelines, prescription, and safety information on over 8,000 drugs
- An online facility to visually identify the pills
- A facility to check drug interactions and side effects of drugs
- More than 600 dosing calculators
- A database of 4000 medical conditions and diseases with images online
- Multiple educational videos, pictures, directives, and journals online. These help the Nurse Practitioners to continue their education.
- Directories of physicians and formularies.
Almost 50% of the doctors use Medscape. Medscape is free to use.
2. Kareo
A cloud-based Electronic Health Record App, Kareo can record patient appointments. Kareo has multiple functionalities:
- Manage and edit Patient appointments
- Manage Patients and view patient history
- Upload, capture, and annotate documents
- Communicate with Attending physicians, supervisors, and patients
- Prescribe lab tests and order medications
- Track patient billing
The Kareo app enables patient billing, tracks payments, and streamlines the whole process. Using Kareo reduces receivables and allows physicians to realize their dues. Kareo charges US$ 80 per month per user.
3. Diseases Dictionary
This is a free online medical dictionary app. Diseases Dictionary contains detailed information about medical disorders and diseases. Each section of the Medical Dictionary contains clear definitions, symptoms, causes, and treatment. This is a medical disease advisor which enables self-diagnosis. Medical dictionary enlightens you about common diseases and treatment codes.
4. Up-to-date (Android and IOs based)
Liked by nurses and physicians alike, Up-to-date features clinical content on more than 10,000 topics, drug information, and medical calculators. Up-to-date has among its features the following:
- Practice guidelines.
- A drug interaction checker.
- Instant access to research articles and
- A patient education tool.
It allows up to printable 1,500 handouts. With more than 1.3 million users, the results of 80 research studies contained on the app show that it improves outcomes and efficiencies.
Other features of Up-to-date include the following:
- Alerts regarding the latest medical news
- Notifications on topics which include previously read topics and additional related information
- Capability to search medical information in many languages
- More than 10,000 graphics, illustrations, tables, figures, and more
- Up-to-date can be downloaded, but subscriptions are available for residents, nurses, and students at a lower annual price of US$ 195. Apart from android and IOs versions, a partial version is also available on Windows.
5. MediBabble Translator
Nurse practitioners have to interact with patients of all nationalities, and Medibabble Translator makes the work easier. Available for free download, the MediBabble app provides translations into Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian, German, and other languages. This translation app is a handy tool for medical phrases in job situations where interpreters are not always accessible.
6.Epocrates
This is available for both IOs and Android. Epocrates is a drug interaction checker and a pill identifier. Clinical practice guidelines for using medication in different populations make this a popular app. The gamut of topics covered includes allopathic and homeopathic medicines, which makes it the best ICD-10 code for a given patient. Its coverage also includes herbals, OTC medications, and other supplements. The basic app is free. An upgrade costs US$ 174.99. The upgraded app gives access to additional functionalities like medications, labs, clinical guidelines, etc.
7. Sanford Guide
The Sanford guide collection combines various topics and attains the same fame as Sanford textbooks and reference guides. The app is updated once a month with the latest research findings. The multiple syndromes are characterized by infection site, pathogen, anti-infection medication, and prevention measures. The app also features interactive dosing calculators and external peer-reviewed medical journals.
8.Visual DX
Visual DX is a diagnostic tool and a clinical reference combined into one. When nurse practitioners upload pictures of patients’ conditions, Visual DX provides medical expertise available to the nurse practitioners at their fingertips. The scanned images are immediately classified into medical intelligence through Visual DX.
After receiving the information from Visual DX, nurses can analyze the symptoms and recommend treatment. Visual DX challenges the nurse practitioners’ diagnostic accuracy and patient engagement. The name Visual DX comes from the ability of the app to search for visual clues while analyzing patient symptoms. The app is handy while searching for dermatological conditions and medication symptoms apparent to the eye.
Visual DX stores a collection of high-resolution images which display various conditions sorted by the severity of the reaction, body location, immune state, skin condition, etc.
9.CDC Mobile App
This app provides the most recent public health information in the US. It provides access to the latest content such as stories, podcasts, journals, and blogs. It keeps you updated on the diseases of the week, information about the weekly morbidity, and weekly mortality reports. This app is beneficial to nurse practitioners and doctors during the Covid-19 epidemic.
The CDC mobile app helps Nurse Practitioners keep abreast with the disease trends, vaccines, their availability, and other reports. Nurse Practitioners can expand their knowledge base about the disease of the week. The CDC app talks about lesser-known illnesses and their treatment methods.
10. Human Anatomy Atlas
The Human Anatomy Atlas acts as the study guide for nurse practitioners, students, and attending physicians to the human body. This app stores thousands of interactive models unveiling the intricacies of the human body to the user. It is also a multilingual app that enables descriptions in many different languages.
This enables the nurse practitioner to communicate with patients, speaking different ethnic languages. The app is versatile. It allows the nurse practitioner to view body part names and perform dissections to see the muscular action virtually. It also enables the Nurse practitioners to see simple animations of the human body.
11. Monthly Prescribing Reference
Its earlier version was in print form. Now available as an app, Monthly Prescribing Reference has detailed prescribing information on over 4,300 over-the-counter and prescription medications. Treatment algorithms and guidelines help streamline the nurse practitioners’ decision-making skills. Nurse Practitioners can just subscribe to this app or pay for a comprehensive subscription.
The subscription provides access to Cardiology Advisor, Clinical Pain Advisor, Dermatology Advisor, Endocrinology Advisor, Infectious Diseases Advisor, and many more reference books. These references are searchable and bookmarkable by name for easy referencing.
In addition, there are many more apps, including apps for specialized treatment nurse practitioners
12. Nursing Central
Nursing Central is an app that provides drugs, tests, and disease information. Nurse Practitioners can type in the symptoms and get a list of likely diseases causing the symptoms.
13. NurseGrid
Nurse grid is an app for scheduling and communication, commonly used within the nursing departments of hospitals. Nurses can talk to co-workers and scheduling supervisors through this app. Nursegrid is both Android and iOS-enabled.
14. Nurse’s Pocket Guide
The Nurse’s Pocket Guide app includes a search index for 440 medical conditions. It also contains nurse diagnoses and also care plan guides.
There are many apps providing information on specialized or clinical medicine. These specialized apps are available for the use of attending physicians, residents, and medical students.
Key Takeaways
Various digital apps are ubiquitous in our every day. The more the digital transformation, the greater the availability of apps. The Medical field is not different. Medical apps help nurse practitioners in carrying out their professional responsibilities.
Apps help in
- the continuing education of Nurse Practitioners
- Enabling clinical diagnosis,
- Analysis of symptoms and identifying the causative conditions,
- providing better patient care
- Accessing Electronic Health records and updating them
- Updating records for billing
- Providing drug calculators
- Facilitating access to medical references.
- Communicating with peers and supervisors.
Apps have become a medical necessity and take away the grind of accessing manual records and hardcover medical references. Choose those apps that fulfill your requirements. Subscribe to them directly or otherwise ensure that the hospital subscribes to the apps on your behalf. Apps increase the overall efficiency and productivity of all medical personnel. Their usefulness cannot be underestimated.
