Nurses are trained to support patients even in the most difficult times. However, it is almost impossible to always remain compassionate, professional, and organized. This is where mobile technology rushes to the rescue with a variety of hospital applications for nurses.
Nursing applications come in all shapes and sizes, but there is a group of them the most useful. These applications help nurses overcome the critical drawbacks of the workflow, such as scheduling, patient follow-up, medication follow-up, and staying up to date with medical knowledge. We will review some of the recognized nursing applications and evaluate their practical use.
Programming and planning of activities
Organization in the midst of chaos is the skill that nurses must master if they want to succeed in their profession. But no one says they have to deal with this task alone, so many health professionals use nursing apps focused on planning and scheduling to keep their head fresh and ready for patient care. Here are some of them.
NurseGrid
NurseGrid is a calendar that creates a robust time management system for nurses. First, it allows healthcare specialists to edit their shifts, including regular ones, on duty, on duty, and more. It also integrates with third-party calendar apps and shows colleagues from the same shifts, as well as finds those with whom to change shifts. Exchange is also easy with group and 1: 1 messaging feature.
Patient care planning and monitoring
Patient care plans influence the patient’s recovery success as well as the chances of readmission. To make sure the plan fits the patient’s illness and previous history, but is flexible enough for any changes while walking, nurses need substantial pocket support.
PatientTouch
PatientTouch is a healthcare collaboration tool that integrates with EHRs. It allows nurses to manage their workflows more effectively by introducing features such as:
- Patient identification by barcode scanning at the point of care.
- Secure messages between care teams.
- Maintain patient health records.
Nurse’s pocket guide
This app helps nurses write personalized care plans for their patients with the help of multiple plan assessment and creation tools, such as: guidelines, bookmarks for faster access and editing of information, tags NIC / NOC for each diagnosis, subjective and objective characteristics and much more.
Drug identification and dose verification
Dose calculation is an area that does not tolerate errors, especially for ER patients. Nurses need a tool to review themselves and make sure medications are compatible with each other or with the patient’s diet.
Pill identifier
The app gives nurses access to a database of more than 24,000 Rx / OTC drugs, which can be identified by fingerprint, drug name, shape and color. In addition, health professionals can get additional information about NDC codes, clarity, coating, and repackaging in the Pro version of the app.
Davis Drug Guide for Nurses
This guide helps nurses ensure the safe administration of medications. With the 5,000-drug database and appendices, the app also includes information on cross-drug references, dosage considerations, drug-food interactions, risk factors, and other useful guidelines.
General reference / training
This section focuses on multiple facets of nursing, including assessment guidelines, documentation principles, specific care, and other topics on which a nurse might want to receive advice.
Nursing Center
This application can be called one of the most complete nursing applications because it is a comprehensive reference tool for nursing professionals with detailed information on conditions, tests, treatment and procedures. In addition, Nursing Central provides guidelines for the interpretation of laboratory and diagnostic tests and integrates with the MEDLINE / PubMed database.
Lippincott Nursing Advisor
The advisor consists of numerous clinical entries covering areas such as signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests, diseases and conditions, treatments and more. A team of health specialists updates the content periodically to keep the data relevant.
Nurses’ Health Assessment Manual
This app provides nurses with comprehensive information on assessing adults, children and special populations. Specifically, professional nurses will have three points of attention in their training: procedures, normal findings, and abnormal findings. The app also focuses on the details of health history, as well as the discussion of nursing interventions and diagnoses. Graphic illustrations contribute a lot to the UX of applications.
Mobile nursing is on the rise (or not at all)
So we reviewed a small portion of all the nursing apps available on the market and they are awesome. With such robust, comprehensive, and informative applications, nurses can ensure better care delivery, evidence-based practice, and sharp knife skills. However, the question that follows is why do hospitals themselves not invest in full internal nursing applications?
For the sake of safety, the integration of EHR and the best collaboration of the healthcare team, hospitals must issue their own applications. Without internal applications, any improvement in nursing workflows remains on the side of time management and clinical reference. However, online patient assessment, documentation, and simple care planning are impossible without integration into the hospital’s IT infrastructure. In this case, delays in assessment, diagnosis, and delivery of care will remain where they are.
