The reason that I say this is it has some fantastic features. The book has many of the features that you would expect from a print version of a drug pocket guide:

• Basic drug information (actions, availability, indications and dosage, contraindications, precautions, administration, adverse reactions, patient monitoring, and patient teaching)
• Information on safe drug administration (Injection sites, monitoring blood levels, drug prep/handling/admin, and preventing extravasation)
• Photographic gallery of common tablets and capsules
• Valuable clinical information

In addition to these features this application also takes your basic drug guide information and makes it searchable and light weight. The developers also included a more information and great images, as well as a fun function that give you a random drug of the day. If you look at the pictures below the app is quite simple, making it straight forward and easy to use.

Another feature I liked is that you can bookmark certain drugs. I know when I was working on a multi-organ transplant floor there were a ton of drugs that I would only come across infrequently. Having the list of drugs used on my floor makes it easier to access informations on certain drugs and check important information, such as drug compatibility.

When looking at the information given for each drug I found that I liked this application because it went beyond the medical information and provided the important information for nurses and patient education. This app would have been a huge benefit to me as a nursing student, and I definitely would recommend it to any floor nurse that is looking to stop carrying a textbook on the floor every shift.

My only criticism that I had to offer for this app is that it is pretty cut and dry. When I think about drug medication I often get flashbacks to learning to calculate drip rates, and trying to remember what the correct gtt. Adding something as simple as a drug calculator to this application would make this application even more useful and prevent me from having to exit the application in order to open another application with the capability.

iPad Apps for a Nursing Student

If you want to be a technology evangelist then you need to understand the technology. That and a hundred other half baked justifications (excuses), a bit more student debt, one expensive trip to the Apple store and this nurse has an iPad.

In all seriousness I want to test the iPad's usability and see if it has a felt (since I can't 'measure') impact on my workflow. The product is only weeks old (in Canada), and there are already some fantastic applications and more on the way.

For now I'm starting with:

Productivity iPad Apps

Good Reader: PDF/document viewer. I have been using it to sync research reports that I need to read. I sync 1-5 for fun, and then stacks (20+) when I'm writing about a particular topic so I can flip through them on the subway.

Evernote: I was not a big user of Evernote until the iPad. This application syncs notes, which can include photographs/screenshots, audio (20 minute intervals) and video attachments. I like this for tracking ideas (this blog post for example), random thoughts, project materials, and to file some of the random things I like yet don't have a place for.

Things: This is a expensive To Do list manager and a bit for project management, I'm sure you could get better free ones, but this one syncs with the paid for apps (iPhone/iPad/Desktop), which is mandatory for my lists.

Pulse: A fantastic visual viewer for RSS feeds

Kindle: Free app for eBooks, this is fantastic. I'm not sure about you, but I am definitely an optimistic packer- meaning whether on vacation or a trip to school I will bring extra books just incase I get time to read them. Now I have the books I want to eventually get through on more than my night stand.

Clinical Resources iPad Apps

Epocrates: Provides information on drugs and a range of options from FREE all the way to $199 a year.

Universal Doctor Speak: Don't be scared off by the name of this app, it is really a translator for basic in clinic conversations and has potential for nurses as well. It provides english to French, Spanish or Chinese, as well as some speech options. This allows you to point to an instruction so patients understand your questions/instructions.

Web MD: This app allows you to check out symptoms, drugs and basic first aid information. Useful for interest and to recommend for patients. Interesting to see what patients are able to learn and find out without health care providers.

Health Related iPad Apps

Sleep Cycle: Fascinating app that lets you track the quality and length of yourself. Sleep is very important for nurses and nursing students, this app allows you to measure you average sleep and set an alarm that tries to wake you up when you are coming out of a deep sleep cycle. I also wonder what it would be like to have this type of functionality for out patients, it would be extremely useful to know how much rest they are actually getting. Think about how much we wake up our patients, if we knew they were in a REM cycle perhaps we could wait the extra half our before getting them up for a bath or round of medications.

Lose It: Another important health measure is out daily calorie and nutritional intake, and again this app could make a great addition to our electronic health records. Image your patient handed you a detailed report of their daily, weekly, and monthly calorie intake and weights. Much better than the traditional pen and paper 24 hour system we often use. I also know a lot of nurses that use this app on the iphone once they book their flights to warmer climates.