5 Apps to Make Your Life as a Nurse Practitioner Easier

Becky James

Those of us in the nursing profession know that apps make our lives easier. Minority Nurse reports 95 percent of nurses and nurse practitioners own a smartphone, and 88 percent use smartphone apps at work. Clinical teams use apps to check drug interactions or to match symptoms to an illness. They also use these digital tools to communicate as wells as stay organized on the job and in their lives. So, our apps today play a big role in the job. We’ve reviewed five of the best apps out there for those in the nursing profession.

CDC Mobile App

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an app that can help nurse practitioners and other clinicians review the latest information on public health. You’ll find videos, podcasts, blogs, and data from patient populations around the U.S. It also lists the weekly morbidity and mortality report as well as information on diseases and treatments.

Electronic Preventive Services Selector

The EPSS helps clinicians identify preventive services appropriate for their patients. It’s a decision support tool for screening, counseling, and preventive care. You can search by patient characteristics such as age or behavioral risk factors. It’s an excellent support tool for nurse practitioners, nurses, and doctors. The EPSS works on Android and iPhones as well as having web interactivity that views well on iPads or the desktop.

Epocrates

The epocrates app is from EHR vendor, athenahealth. It’s a medication reference app that:

  • Helps you with medication dosages
  • Helps you select the best ICD-10 code for reimbursement;
  • Offers clinical practice guidelines for the use of medications in specific patient populations;
  • Offers allopathic and homeopathic medications;
  • And there’s even a pill identifier that can tell you most medications just based on the imprint code and physical characteristics like color and shape.

UpToDate

The Wolters Kluwer UpToDate app is an important tool for evidence-based research and information. You can find clinical practice guidelines, medical calculators, a drug interaction tool, and links to hundreds of full-text research articles. Every medical student could use this app, and for nursing teams, it’s an invaluable part of staying on top of the latest research and innovations. You can even earn continuing education credits just by researching information on the app.

VisualDX

The visualDx provides decision support to clinicians to improve their diagnostic outcomes, patient engagement, and healthcare outcomes. The app is easily searchable by patient symptoms or diagnosis. It’s especially useful to diagnose visual clues, thus marking it as a good tool for dermatological conditions. The app has a large category of visual images for a variety of conditions to help nursing teams improve their diagnoses.

There’s an App for That

Nurse practitioners use apps to educate and inform their important work in the communities we serve. Most nurse teams have smartphones and use apps on the job every day. Digital apps are invaluable tools that help us succeed in our efforts to provide quality care and caring to our patients.

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