Top 5 Nurse Practitioner Apps
Check out these top 5 nurse practitioner apps for clinical rotations and work. With easy-to-use smartphone apps, evidence-based recommendations are literally at your fingertips.
Not only is this information helpful in a pinch — it also helps you give patients accurate, up-to-date care. Here are five clinical reference apps worth keeping on your phone, with notes on what each does best and what it costs.
1. UpToDate
UpToDate describes itself as an "evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource" for point-of-care decisions. Experts write in-depth recommendations for virtually every disease or complaint — think of it as a comprehensive medical textbook in your pocket. Each article includes relevant figures, tables, and images, and CME hours can be submitted to certifying bodies (AANP, AMA, ACEP, and others).
The drawbacks are cost and layout. It requires a subscription that can run more than $50/month (with an added fee for app access), though many hospitals and universities provide it free, and students/residents get a significant discount. Some find the layout verbose, but once you learn it, speed and effectiveness climb dramatically.
2. Epocrates
Hailed as a top medical reference app, Epocrates is used by over a million healthcare providers. It offers updated guidelines, disease overviews, medication interactions, drug information, and differential-diagnosis tools. Best of all, there's a free version — limited but still useful, with drug info, clinical practice guidelines, and interaction checks.
The premium tier (around $174.99/year, under $15/month) adds much more, including its standout Disease Information feature: query a condition and get highlights, treatment approach, history and exam findings, differentials, complications, and follow-up. It also adds ICD-10 lookups, CPT codes, lab info, and infectious-disease treatments. Students, faculty, and residents can get premium at a steep discount.
Epocrates is sleek and easy to navigate on the go. It's not as deep as UpToDate, but it makes referencing effortless and costs a fraction as much — though premium must be bought annually rather than monthly.
3. Medscape
Medscape offers information similar to UpToDate and Epocrates — primarily disease and drug content — but the big difference is price: it's 100% free. You get in-depth disease information, drug info and interactions, pill identifiers, and useful calculators.
What sets Medscape apart is its Procedures section: step-by-step techniques for nearly any procedure, plus anesthesia, complications, and postoperative care — very useful for students doing procedures in clinical. It also has a fun interactive diagnostics feature for practicing X-ray and CT interpretation, and CEU-eligible learning. It offers fewer tables and figures than UpToDate and can be a little harder to navigate, but it's an underrated, free resource. A free account (valid email) unlocks some features.
4. Merck Manual
The Merck Manual, first published in 1899, is one of the world's best-selling medical textbooks, and the app puts that content at your fingertips. It's in-depth, expansive, and searchable, breaking each condition down into pathophysiology, etiology, evaluation, treatment, essentials, and key points. It also offers videos on procedures and disease overviews, plus some clinical calculators.
5. FP Notebook
The Family Practice Notebook (FP Notebook) is a point-of-care resource that started in 1995 and now spans 31 specialties and thousands of interlinked topics. It has searchable disease information — and that's mostly what it does; it doesn't offer extra tools or drug information.
What it does well is read like class notes, with numbered and sub-numbered outlines that strip away extra verbiage so you can find clinically relevant information quickly and painlessly. The information is reasonably current (though it doesn't pride itself on being the most up-to-date), and like Medscape it's 100% free to download.
