101 Indispensable Tech-Tools for Nurses

   General Nursing Utilities   Job Search Tools    Nursing Tools and Apps   Online Forums and Communities
 
Technology is transforming medical establishments and careers, not just at the administrative level, but for individuals as well. New apps make it easier to track and look up information than ever and online forums, communities, and job boards have revolutionized career development and professional networking. For anyone entering a medical career such as nursing right now, the career field is radically different than it was even just a few years ago. Keeping up with newly developing technologies is an important habit for nurses and anyone else in the medical industry. This list catalogs some excellent tools available online or as mobile apps that nurses can use to be more effective at their jobs, or even while looking for a new one.
 

General Nursing Utilities

Scheduling is one of the biggest headaches for a medical facility, as it is crucial to have some nurses and other medical professionals on call 24/7. There are many software companies trying to solve this problem with shift management and staffing programs. In fact, for any major difficulties being faced by medical professionals today, there is likely to be a website or app to help them deal with it more efficiently. Here are a few of the best.

     

  1. Pain.com

    Pain.com is a pain management resource site. Content on this site explains the causes of pain, how to treat it, and outside resources for help.

  2. American College of Physicians – PIER

    ACP PIER offers physicians’ information and educational resources. Site users will find authoritative, evidence-based guidance to improve clinical care.

  3. The Medical Biochemistry Page

    The Medical Biochemistry Page is a site dedicated to all things biochemistry. This site is a valuable resource that has mounds of information about many different categories and practices in this field.

  4. Business Management Systems – Nurse Scheduling Software

    Nurse Scheduling Software is a business solution which offers nursing scheduling in a snap. The basics of this program are nurse scheduling and rostering for centers, clinics, and hospitals.

  5. Shiftplanning – Scheduling Software for Nurses

    Scheduling Software for Nurses allows every nurses custom schedule to be accommodated. This program allows users to make the most unique schedules for nursing staff in any professional setting.

  6. Your Nursing Tutor

    Your Nursing Tutor offers education and tips for success in the nursing field. This site is operated by a professional and is meant to provide expert-based content for nursing students.

  7. Brush up on Your Drug Calculation Skills

    Nurses Are Great is a great resource for various tips in fairly specific areas of nursing. Additionally, articles are provided with a variety of beneficial information relevant to nursing. The drug calculation page is a great resource for brushing up.

  8. Dosage Help

    Dosage Help is a website devoted exclusively to everything dosage related with quick links for Mass for Mass, Amount in IV Fluid, Dosage by Weight, and even Practice Questions and Dosage Question Steps.

  9. How To Measure Blood Pressure, And What It All Means

    How To Measure Blood Pressure, And What It Means is an in-depth resource for measuring blood pressure and includes step-by-step instructions.

  10. RX List

    RX List is a great tool for finding a desired medication, including a drug index and a symptom checker.

  11. Greenway Medical

    Greenway Medical primarily is a source for electronic health records, but also provides services to improve U.S. care coordination.

  12. PubMed

    PubMed is run by the US National Library of Medicine and provides more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from a variety of quality medical journals.

  13. Nuesoft

    Nuesoft is a software development company and the first to deliver platform independent medical software to the medical community.

  14. PDR Net

    PDR Net is the industry-leading distributor of drug labeling information and also provides a great drug information reference source on the Internet.

  15. Medical Dictionary

    Medical Dictionary is a very straight-forward website that simply has a search bar for medical terms and a list of the most popular searches. The minimalist page, similar to the Google search engine page, is a nice uncluttered resource.

  16. Masimo

    Masimo creates patient monitoring technologies that are noninvasive and innovative. They include medical devices and various sensors.

  17. Quizlet’s Nurse tech study sets

    The Nurse Tech study sets on Quizlet are great for providing different tools for specific groups of nurse terms and practices.

  18. SRS Soft

    SRS Soft provides EHR and healthcare IT solutions for physicians and medical specialists. They pride themselves on being the voice of the physician.

  19. InTouch Health

    InTouch Health creates and manufactures one-of-a-kind devices called Class II telemedicine remote presence medical devices.

  20. Laerdal SimMan

    Laerdal SimMan is a resource for simulating patients injured or somehow in need of critical care.

  21. Omni MD

    Omni helps manage electronic health records and health information exchange. They are one of the few EHRs to receive certification on all 44 Clinical Quality Measures.

  22. Patient Secure

    Patient Secure is a Biometric Patient Identification Management System that analyzes the palm vein as a part of their medical record.

  23. CINAHL

    CINHAL is a database of health journals dating back to 1937 with additional content and lesson material.

  24. Shifthound

    Shifthound provides scheduling software for hospital employees and is fully integrated to work in streamlining schedule changes and PTO updates.

  25. iMedicalApps

    iMedicalApps provides lists of different apps for different devices, reviews and analysis on each, and a blog that goes over relevant news in the medical community.

 
 
 

Nurse Tools and Apps

From 3D visual anatomy simulations to pill identifiers and dosage calculators, there’s a world of medical information that fits on a smartphone or tablet. There are even apps to help nurses study for the notoriously difficult NCLEX licensure examination. Here are some apps that every nursing student and working nurse should consider downloading.

 

  1. Essential Anatomy

    The Essential Anatomy app is meant to revolutionize medical education for physicians, students, and their patients. This program provides users with a 3D, high tech look at human anatomy for informative and entertaining purposes.

  2. Urgent Care – Doctors & Nurses Standing By 24/7

    Urgent Care – Doctors & Nurses Standing By 24/7 offers users with instant access to medical staff no matter what time of day. In addition to connecting people with medical advice, this app also provides symptom checkers and a medical dictionary.

  3. PocketPharmacist – Drug Information, Interaction Checker, and Medication Organizer

    This app offers people a way to connect with vital medication information. Doctors, students, and nurses can quickly refer to it in order to advise their patients about important medication info.

  4. NeuroMind

    NeuroMind is the number one neurosurgery app with a great amount of recognition for reputable sources. This app offers decision support for doctors, students, and patients who are looking to learn more about conditions and procedures.

  5. Dragon Medical Search by Nuance

    Dragon is a talk-to-text program that helps medical service providers capture every bit of spoken data including patient reports of their own condition, and discussions of treatment and billing options, for archiving and easy retrieval.

  6. Visible Body 3D Anatomy Atlas

    Visible Body 3D Anatomy Atlas has been ranked number one in anatomy apps by iMedicalApps. This 3D imaging app is ideal for students and teachers of anatomy, as well as for patient education.

  7. Med Surg I Nursing in a Flash

    This app is for nursing students and is based on notes that have been converted into study questions. Nursing students can use this app to learn on the go from anywhere.

  8. NCSBN Learning Extension Medication Flashcards

    NCSBN Learning Extension Medication Flashcards offers students a quick and easy way to study medications. This app is designed to be simple and informative with many different easy-to-use categories for studying.

  9. Jonsap Apps LLC – IV Drips

    This app is meant to be a tool for use in emergency and critical care scenarios. IV Drips offers 44 of the most common used critical drips for quick reference.

  10. Epocrates

    Epocrates offers users instant access to drug, disease, and diagnostic information. This app can be downloaded and then referenced in a decision-making situation or used as an educational tool.

  11. Shiftboard for Nurse Scheduling

    Shiftboard for Nurse Scheduling is an online nursing schedule program for those sometimes challenging scheduling difficulties. This program offers a way for the user to view and edit schedules for medical staff.

  12. UpToDate

    This program offers medical staff a way to make smarter decisions and offer better medical care. UpToDate combines the latest clinical knowledge with cutting-edge technology.

  13. Animated Essential Atlas of Anatomy and Physiology

    This app offers users an interesting and animated way to explore human anatomy for educational purposes and a point of reference. Users will discover an easy way to learn about human anatomy from anywhere.

  14. Calculate (Medical Calculator) by QxMD

    Calculate (Medical Calculator) by QxMD is a clinical calculator and decision support tool. This app is meant to be readily available to the medical community for instant access to vital information.

  15. VISUAL: Muscle & Skeletal Anatomy

    VISUAL: Muscle & Skeletal Anatomy offers over 100 Muscle & Skeletal with over 700,000 text characters of detailed information on anatomy. This detailed guide can be easily accessed by medical staff.

  16. Injectable Medicines

    Injectable Medicines offers nursing staff a selection of preloaded shift rotas. Users also have the ability to customize their own rotas to suit their individual needs.

  17. The Cochrane Library

    The Cochrane Library is a decision making app for nursing staff, students, and other medical personnel. This app is full of high quality medical information which can be accessed from anywhere.

  18. Free Nurse Tutor

    Free Nurse Tutor is an interactive and self-paced approach app for nursing students. This app is meant to be fun, challenging, and useful and provides easily accessible educational material.

  19. ion Citatel’s NCLEX Study App

    NCLEX is a medical app for quick reference materials and materials meant to be a study guide for nursing students. Each category on this app has multiple questions for quick practice testing.

  20. ECG Pocket Reference Free

    ECG Pocket Reference Free is a guide for healthcare professionals. This app is an interactive and enjoyable way for medical professionals to improve their skills in ECG interpretation.

  21. Advanced MD

    Advanced MD offers advanced features and services to medical personnel. This program provides users with a way to coordinate practices as well as improve knowledge.

  22. Aprima

    Aprima is an electronic organizational system for health records, practice management and revenue cycle management. This system is meant to improve the quality of care, patient satisfaction, and to improve the bottom line of health care providers.

  23. Nursing Procedure Checklists

    Nursing Procedure Checklists App is a great way to quickly pull up a number of useful checklists to ensure safety and following of protocol. Checklist topics vary from performing a physical exam to perioperative nursing.

  24. iPharmacy – Pill ID & Rx Reminder

    iPharmacy is a useful tool for comparing prices on over 20,000 different medications and includes coupons, reminders for taking medicine, and FDA recalls and alerts.

  25. Saunders Mobile Review Questions for the NCLEX-RN Exam, LITE – By Elsevier

    Saunders Mobile Review is useful for practicing examination questions for the NCLEX-RN Exam. The app also includes video and audio format questions to better prepare students.

  26. Monthly Prescribing Reference

    The Oncology Nurse Advisor is great for a variety of cancer-related tasks. Point-of-care nursing tools and news on breakthrough treatments are a few of the features it provides.

  27. Human Body Anatomy

    This app is great for introductory elements of the anatomy of the human body. The content covered in this app is equivalent to a 101 course in human body anatomy.

  28. Instant ECG: An Electrocardiogram Rhythms Interpretation Guide

    Ranked as the number one Instant ECG app on the iPhone, Instant ECG provides over 90 high resolution ECG examples, 30 high-definition movies, and plenty of examination questions to refresh yourself.

  29. Certified Emergency Nurse

    Certified Emergency Nurse app helps prepare for the Certified Emergency Nurse test with over 1,400 multiple choice questions and another 1,400 flashcards to work through.

  30. Medical Encyclopedia

    Created by the University of Maryland, this medical encyclopedia provides over 50,000 pages of medical information in English, but is also available in Spanish. Categories are broken down into symptoms, injury, disease, poison, among others.

  31. Davis’s Drug Guide for Nurses

    The 13th edition of Davis’s Drug Guide for Nurses is the most up-to-date and thoroughly equipped model yet. The app has cost information for the top 200 drugs and organizes drugs by their generic and trade names for increased readability.

  32. modalityBODY: Interactive Anatomy and Medical Imaging for iPad

    modalityBODY is an extremely comprehensive, yet versitle app that provides an atlas of anatomy sampler, with the full version available for purchase if interested, along with a variety of flash cards for neuroscience, histology, musculoskeletal, and other areas.

  33. Pill Identifier by Drugs.com

    Pill Identifier has a searchable database of over 10,000 medications with a search-as-you-type feature that makes finding specific medicine much more intuitive. The Pro edition includes over 7,000 photographs as well for increased ease.

  34. Skyscape Medical Resources

    Skyscape Medical Resources is an extremely popular app that is used by over 2.4 million professionals in the healthcare field. Included in the free version are many features such as a medical calculator, clinical medicine outlines, and comprehensive information about a variety of medicines.

  35. Nursing Health Assessment Q&A

    Wound Care Essentials is for RNs, physical thherapists, physicians, among others, to provide effective solutions to treating atypical wounds.

  36. Cansav Soft Medical Android Apps

    Nursing Calulator is an app specifically for nurses and doctors to quickly calculate in the areas of clinical, conversion, dosage, drug, and IV rates.

  37. Micromedex Drug Information

    Micromedex is great for searching about drug information and is extremely comprehensive. Micromedex is known for being an unbiased source and now is available for free on mobile devices.

  38. Pocket Lab Values

    Pocket Lab Values includes lab values for over 320 categories including cardiovascular, electrolytes, endocrine, among others. The lab panels are easy to access and include a variety of options.

  39. Nursing Central

    Nursing Central requires a paid subscription to their online Nursing Central Service, but includes a variety of worthwhile features. New innovations such as “Grasp” and “Glimpse”, but also Davis’s Drug Guide, Taber’s Medical Dictionary, and a variety of other standalone features compiled into one.

  40. Nursing Flashcards

    This app is a good set of flashcards for RNs, LPNs, and med school students alike. Decks are broken into fundamentals, terminology, vocabulary, abbreviations, and others.

  41. Nursing Exam

    Nursing Exam was developed by experienced healthcare professionals and includes anatomy, lab values, vocab, and other content to help hone in on particular nursing skills.

 
 
 

Job Search Tools

Even though the number of nursing jobs is growing fast compared to many careers, with a 26% growth rate according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it can still be hard to get your foot in the door at a hospital or clinic in your preferred location. Fortunately, the Internet has made finding out about nursing jobs easier than ever with a bevy of job boards for nurses in any specialty or region.

  1. Medepage

    Medepage is a health care network site with much to offer medical professionals. This site acts as a job search agent for healthcare jobs, health care jobs, nursing jobs, nurse jobs, medical jobs, health jobs, allied health jobs.

  2. Association Career Network Nursing

    Association Career Network Nursing is a site which hosts exciting nursing job opportunities. This site is also a great resource for skilled applicants within the nursing industry.

  3. Glass Door Nurse Jobs

    Glass Door Nurse Jobs offers all of the most accurate and up-to-date information about nursing jobs and being a professional nurse. This page gives information about salary, environment, growth, and other important information about the profession as well as a job search option.

  4. Career Vitals

    Career Vitals is a health care job search which focuses on one thing–finding jobs for health care workers. This site has a directory of jobs as well as advice on landing a position.

  5. American Traveler Travel Nurse Jobs & Allied Health Jobs

    American Traveler Travel Nurse Jobs & Allied Health Jobs is a site devoted to finding employment for traveling nurses and allied health care workers. Site users can browse through the directory as well as learn how to more easily get a job they want.

  6. Nurse Icon

    Nurse iCON is short for Individual Career Opportunities in Nursing and puts nurses in touch with job opportunities around Michigan.

  7. Nursing Jobs US

    Nursing Jobs US helps nurses relocate and find work and also find jobs locally.

  8. Nursing Job Cafe

    Nursing Job Café puts employers and nurses in contact with each other with thousands of positions available across the country.

  9. Health eCareers Network

    Health eCareers Network is a tool for nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, and other jobs in the medical field.

  10. Jobs for Registered Nurses

    Jobs for Registered Nurses allows professionals to more directly distinct themselves from each other and services employers across the country.

  11. Nursing Jobs Plus

    Nursing Jobs Plus features various profiles on jobs around the country and helps put nurses in touch with great employers around the country.

  12. Nursing Jobs

    Nursing Jobs is a great tool for nurses and employers, but schools as well. The site encourages employers to visit various colleges.

  13. Aureus Medical Group

    Aureus Medical Group is one of the largest medical staffing firms in the country, so it has plenty of sources for connecting nurses with jobs.

  14. Nurse Pro

    Nurse Pro helps find nurses jobs and is one of the fastest growing firms on the east coast.

 
 
 

Forums and Communities

While the constant availability of medical information is a huge benefit of the Internet, an even bigger one might be the opportunity to connect with other people with similar interests, values, and careers. These forums for nurses, doctors, and others in the health field offer the chance to communicate with people at all levels of experience.

  1. Just Us Nurses

    Just Us Nurses is a resource for nurses to come together and discuss different issues within the nursing community and struggles typically faced on the job.

  2. Diversity Nursing

    Diversity Nursing is a “niche” website for nurses in general that tries to encompass all levels of experience, including student nurses. It’s used to highlight employer profiles, various nurses, and students.

  3. Nursing Forum UK

    Nursing Forum UK provides a variety of features. They highlight a Job of the Day around the UK, and allows nurses to upload resumes and cover letters.

  4. Living With Graves Disease

    Living with Graves’ Disease is a forum for those suffering from an autoimmune disorder that causes thyroid enlargement and other hyperthyroid symptoms. While not specifically geared towards nurses, this site is a great resource for any health worker who sees patients with chronic or acute thyroid problems.

  5. Ultimate Nurse Forum

    The forum of Nurse.com is highly specific, allowing nurses in very specific fields to enter into discussions with each other.

  6. Healing Well

    Healing Well is a site which offers resources, community connection, and support to its users. The different sections of this site are broken down by interest and purpose and range from educational to social interaction.

  7. Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free Forum

    Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free Forum is dedicated to people who suffer from these conditions and those who treat it. Information on this forum comes from experts as well as first hand from people who live with these conditions.

  8. Kennedys Disease Forum

    Kennedys Disease Forum is a for the Kennedy’s Disease Association, a non-profit association. This forum focuses on topics and issues in the community of people who treat and suffer from Kennedy’s disease.

  9. The Kawasaki Disease Forum

    The Kawasaki Disease Forum is a community forum for people to openly discuss Kawasaki Disease. On this forum, people can find posts on issues which concern people with this condition as well as those who treat it.

  10. Nurse Connect

    Nurse Connect is a network of nurses and allows them to connect with each other and share resources. This site is meant to enable communication between nurses who have worked with each prior or who are looking to build professional relationships.

  11. Nurse Together

    Nurse Together offers empowerment, encouragement, and opportunities to career nurses. Site users will discover resources and information about education and employment opportunities in their field.

  12. Clinician 1

    Clinician 1 is an online community of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Users will find the latest information on their field from experts as well as fellow professionals.

  13. Nurse Anesthesia Forums

    Nurse Anesthesia Forums offers nurses and members access to features which will help them connect with others and opportunities. Site users can browse many different categories and post topics for community discussion.

  14. RN Travel Space

    RN Travel Space offers travel nurses resources for information as well as employment. Nurses on this site receive assistance for their job search and career enrichment.

  15. My Nursing Community

    My Nursing Community is a site where educators can exchange ideas and advice on courses and content. Site users will discover valuable resources for education and advancing their career and professional skills.

  16. Campaign for Action Online Community

    Campaign for Action Online Community promotes active discussion and information sharing for future nurses and career nurses. Members of this site can learn from each other through posts and discussions.

  17. Advance for Nurses

    Advance for Nurses has content which includes resources and information for career and educational advancements. Site posts are written from an expert perspective and can benefit students and professionals.

  18. Nurse Zone

    Nurse Zone is a site dedicated to all things nursing. Posts and site content center around students and career nurses and topics which impact their profession.

  19. Nurse & Nursing Forum

    Nurse & Nursing Forum offers nursing students and professional nurses a way to connect to information and other nurses. Content is a mix of posted topics from site users and expert advice.

  20. AONE

    AONE is a site that provides a way to collaborate the best practices and encourage the sharing of knowledge. Content offers resources and help for users to discover solutions to day-to-day issues.

  21. ALS Forums

    ALS Forums is a volunteer driven resource for anyone directly or indirectly affected by ALS and MND. Content on this site is meant to inform and educate people about these conditions as well as offer tools for help for those who suffer from ALS and MND.