6 Must-have Technology Gadgets for Nurses

From smartphones to fitness trackers, integrating technologies can help you streamline, de-stress and spend more time on direct patient care. Experts say these digital tools are transforming the healthcare process. Gone are the old days when lab reports were sent to the nurses’ desk to be retrieved. Now, thanks to smartphones, you can receive timely lab results as soon as they are available. And, when a patient hits the call button, you’re contacted directly on a smartphone for a timelier response.

Here are 6 must-have tech tools you need to boost productivity and efficiency: 

1. Tutorial-On-the-Go: The best online tools and technology are those that minimize medical errors, improve clinical workflow, educate and enhance a nurse’s overall understanding of the field. With the UpToDate mobile app you can access evidence-based clinical information around-the-clock to come up with answers to questions quickly and easily. It’s also a great study guide, with more than 1,000 patient education articles, more than 150 medical calculators and monographs for over 5,000 drugs.

2. Germ buster: Introducing the mobile phone cleaner, PhoneSoap, a genius gadget that will disinfect you smartphone in six minutes. Who wants to bring germs home?

3. Stay fit: Basis Peak Health Tracker (iOS and Android) helps you stay fit and coaches you to calmness with breathing exercises. It tracks metabolism in terms of heart rate, skin temperature and calories. It also sends notifications for calls, texts, emails and calendar events right on a nurse’s wrist.

4. Pharmacy 101: The Pill Identifier by Drugs.com offers an easily searchable pill guide helping you quickly search over 10,000 pills by shape, color, strength and more.

5. Break down language barriers: As nurses, you care for patients of diverse backgrounds. To understand the patient’s needs, it's most helpful to communicate in the patient's native language. MediBabble is a free app that assists in taking a medical history and performing an assessment with non-English speaking patients. The app assists with communication in five languages - Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian and Haitian Creole.

6. Student recommended must-haves: Chamberlain students weighed in with their wish list for must-have technology gadgets. Hands down, several students surveyed said they’d like to have their own pocket pulse oximeter in their nursing toolkit. “It would help so I don’t have to track one down on the unit,” said Susan F. 

If you’re looking to make your nursing practice more effective, there are many digital tools that can help you. Smartphone apps can help nurses connect to trustworthy sources of information that can help make nurses feel a little less anxious and more focused about patient care.

Want to learn more about how apps can boost your nursing practice? Read more:

5 Apps to Help You through the MSN-FNP Specialty Track

13 Favorite Nursing Apps

By Molly Mattison