Nurses are expected to perform at their absolute best at all times. Making sure to continuously engage oneself in the learning process is one way to help make this happen. It’s a good thing there’s an abundance of medical-focused applications to help you out. Using these resources can help keep you updated with the latest developments in the nursing field. Furthermore, it can help you retain and cement previously learned knowledge and skills.
Also Read: 100 Best Android Apps for Nurses
If you’re wondering what Nursing applications you can download for free, check out these completely free nursing apps:
1Oxford Medical Dictionary
The app of the Oxford Dictionary of Nursing is essentially the app form of the book which is an indispensable reference material for nurses and nursing students. It features not only a wealth of the nursing-related terminologies commonly used in the field today but also terms related to medicine, anatomy, physiology, psychiatry, nutrition, and pharmacology as well.
2Drugs.com Medication Guide
This is a free app from Drugs.com that is a great tool for looking up drugs and their interactions with each other. It’s extremely comprehensive, has an easy-to-use, quick search engine, and even has a pill identifier feature. Using this feature, drugs can be identified by simply inputting their shape, imprint, or color.
3Calculate by QxMD
This is a calculating application, as its name suggests, which will help you calculate Framingham or CHADs2 scores in a jiffy. For a free app, the way Calculate focuses on things that can be directly helpful in diagnosis and general practice is very practical. As the store summary says, it focuses on helping you make decisions and not just calculate numbers.
4Medscape
This application contains more than 3,200 diseases, conditions, and procedures. If you are having a hard time understanding a certain medical condition, disease, or a diagnosis, you can take this app out and simply look it up using Medscape’s search function.
5Epocrates
You can use Epocrates to look for drug interactions and other drug information. It also boasts a wealth of calculators and tools for everyday medical use. Its user interface is very clean and easy to navigate. This app also features a pill identifier.
6CDC Vaccine Schedules
Get CDC Vaccine Schedules if you need a quick guide to immunization schedules. It’s free and complete with footnotes and contraindications. One small but helpful feature is how the vaccine names are hyperlinked to dose specifications. It also updates automatically so that information is always up-to-date.
7Visual Anatomy Free
Visual Anatomy Free is one of the best free anatomical atlases out there. Many apps force you to pay in order to access a majority of their content, but the free version of this app already features plenty of content to go around from muscles to bones to nerves and vasculature of each system. Descriptions are also very detailed. The provided model is easy to navigate, and there are even various quiz modes available.
8Nursing Dictionary by Farlex
Nursing Dictionary by Farlex is another great nursing dictionary available to download for nursing students. It’s also one of the more complete in terms of information while not having spent a penny yet. It holds more than 56,000 medical terms related to nursing, and even quality images from other trusted medical dictionaries too.
9WebMD: Check Your Symptoms
This prominent medical website also offers its own app. It offers all the health facts and information you need to know. It also has interactive tools that you can use in emergencies or otherwise like symptom and drug interaction checkers. A lot of patients also use this for self-learning so it might be useful to see what information they might have read up on based on this app.
10Skyscape Medical Library
Skyscape Medical Library is one of the most essential nursing apps and clinical mobile resources available. Here, you can find lots of medical and health information. It’s easy to use and well-organized as well.
11Nurse’s Pocket Guide
This app is a comprehensive nursing guide which can help you make more informed diagnoses and also create better healthcare plans for your patient. It features more than 400 medical conditions with their associated defining characteristics, actions, and interventions.
12Emergency Nurse Essentials
Emergency Nurse Essentials is made for emergency nurses specifically. The app is very comprehensive and features an overview of many of the common situations, systems, illnesses, and treatments usually encountered by emergency nurses. Some of most need-to-know concepts and topics including various types of emergencies and modes of patient management are tackled in the form of guidelines and figures.
13Nursing Central
Nursing Central describes itself as an “all-in-one clinical solution for nurses”. This is because Nursing Central is actually a combination of five different nursing applications: Davis’s Drug Guide, Taber’s Medical Dictionary, Davis’s Laboratory and Diagnostic Tests, Diseases and Disorders, and Prime PubMed. The app is great for quick stats and drug information and even offers some skills videos as refreshers.
14My Nursing Mastery: Student, NCLEX & Nurse’s Guide
While this app is aimed at nursing students in their review for the NCLEX, it is also helpful for new nurses as well. The free version only offers limited access to its full features of topics for nursing competencies, guidelines, and various teaching charts, but there is still are large amount of content freely available.
15Canopy Speak
Canopy Speak offers a wide variety of translated medical terminology and phrases for those who may encounter many different languages and ethnicity in their practice. The great thing about it is that it covers a wide range of specialties and also a wide range of languages—not to mention that it’s completely free too.
There you have it — 15 must-use Nursing apps that you should try now. Do you know of other Nursing apps that you think every nurse should try? If so, share them with us. We would love to hear from you!
