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Nurses are trained to support patients even in the most trying times. However, it’s nearly impossible always to stay compassionate, professional and organized. This is where mobile technology hurries to the rescue with a variety of hospital apps for nurses.
Nursing applications come in all shapes and sizes, but there’s a cluster of the most helpful ones. These apps assist nurses in overcoming workflow-critical pitfalls, such as scheduling, patient monitoring, medication tracking and keeping up with medical knowledge. We will review some of the acknowledged nursing apps and evaluate their practical use.
Scheduling & activity planning
Organization amidst the chaos is the skill that nurses have to master if they want to succeed in their profession. But no one says they have to cope with this task alone, so many health specialists use scheduling and planning-focused nursing apps to keep their heads fresh and ready for patient care. Here are some of them.
NurseGrid
Google Play
NurseGrid is a calendar that creates a robust time management system for nurses. First, it allows health specialists to edit their shifts, including regular, on call, charge and more. It also integrates with 3rd party calendar apps and shows the colleagues on the same shifts as well as finds those to swap shifts with. Swapping is easy too with the group and 1:1 messaging feature.
Patient care planning & monitoring
Patient care plans influence patient’s recovery success as well as readmission chances. To make sure that the plan fits the patient’s disease and previous history but is flexible enough for any changes on the go, nurses need a substantial pocket-size support.
PatientTouch
PatientTouch is a care collaboration tool that integrates with EHRs. It allows nurses to manage their workflows more effectively by introducing such features as:
- Patient identification via barcode scanning at the point of care.
- Secure messaging across care teams.
- Keeping patient health records.
Nurse’s Pocket Guide
Google Play
This app assists nurses in writing personalized care plans for their patients with the help of multiple assessment and plan creating tools, including: guidelines, bookmarks for faster information access and editing, NIC/NOC labels for each diagnosis, subjective and objective characteristics and more.
Drug identification & dose verification
Dosage calculation is an area that doesn’t tolerate mistakes, especially for ER patients. Nurses need a tool to double-check themselves and also reassure that drugs are compatible with each other or patient’s diet.
Pill Identifier
The app gives nurses access to a database with more than 24,000 Rx/OTC medications, which can be identified by imprint, drug name, shape and color. Moreover, health specialists can get additional information on NDC Codes, clarity, coating and repackages in the app’s Pro version.
Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses
Google Play
This guide helps nurses to be sure in safe drug administration. With the 5,000-drug database and appendices, the app also includes information on cross-referencing of drugs, dosing considerations, interactions between drugs and food, risk factors and other useful guidelines.
General reference/training
This section concentrates on multiple nursing facets, including assessment guidelines, documentation principles, care specifics and other topics a nurse might want to get advice in.
Nursing Central
Google Play
This app can be called one of the most comprehensive nursing apps because it is a vast reference tool for nurse practitioners with detailed information on conditions, tests, treatment and procedures. Moreover, Nursing Central provides guidelines on lab and diagnostic test interpretation and as well as integrates with the MEDLINE/PubMed database.
Lippincott Nursing Advisor
Google Play
The Advisor consists of numerous clinical entries that cover such areas as signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests, diseases and conditions, treatments and more. A team of health specialists updates the content regularly to keep the data relevant.
Nurses' Health Assessment Handbook
Google Play
This app provides nurses with comprehensive information on assessing adults, children and special populations. Specifically, nurse practitioners will have three focus points in their training: procedures, normal findings and abnormal findings. The app also focuses on health history details as well as discussion of interventions and nursing diagnoses. Graphic illustrations contribute much to the apps’ UX.
Mobile nursing is on the rise (or not quite)
So we reviewed a teeny-tiny bit of all apps for nursing available on the market, and they are impressive. With such robust, thorough and informational applications, nurses can assure better care delivery, evidence-based practice and knife-sharp skills. However, the question that follows is why hospitals themselves don’t invest into fully-fledged internal nursing apps?
For the sake of security, EHR integration and better care team collaboration, hospitals need to issue their own applications. Without internal apps, any improvements in nursing workflows stay on the side of time management and clinical reference. Still, online patient assessment, documentation and straightforward care planning are impossible without integration into hospital’s IT infrastructure. In this case, delays in assessment, diagnostics and care delivery will stay where they are.