nurse technology Archives - Mother Nurse Love

Why A Social Media Break Is Healthy For Nurses

by Sarah Jividen | Jul 11, 2019 | Mind, Nurse Health Tips, Nurse Life

Between my time working as an emergency room nurse and nurse mom blogger, I use technology almost constantly. In fact, both of my jobs would be impossible to do without them. It would be no understatement to say I am dependent on them.

However, after a particularity stressful year, I did a little soul searching to see where I could add a bit of intention in my life. And minimizing my use of social media seemed like a good place to start.

After all, I mindlessly check one or more of my social media accounts several times a day. And as a nurse and mom, my mind is spinning with 1000’s of to-dos already. How hard could it be to take a social media break?

Now, this may seem counter-intuitive coming from a nurse blogger who uses social media for business. I’m not saying nurses should give up social media permanently. But it may be helpful for nurses to take a social media break once in a while because our brains are constantly flipping through patient care tasks.

I did a social media break challenge for one week.

My experiment started easily enough. But just like clockwork, the minute I stopped paying attention, my fingers automatically tried to pull up my Instagram or Facebook accounts. My social media addiction was more ingrained than I thought.

My plan required increased preventative measures to ensure success. So I went a step further and deleted both the Instagram and Facebook apps off my phone. That way, if I wanted to use the apps, I would have to sign in via the internet and type in my password.

Wouldn’t you know, just the annoyance of having to type in my password was enough to remind me of why I had started this experiment in the first place. I successfully created a barrier to help reinforce my social media addiction recovery! (Nurses are solution finders, what can I say!?).

Do you remember what it feels like not to be constantly looking at your phone?

3 Reasons Why A Social Media Break Is Healthy For Nurses

#1. It gives nurses an opportunity for more personal social engagement

A social media break can remind us to be more present with real people. Sadly, social media is often not an authentic representation of what is going on in people’s personal lives. It is a magnification of what people want you to see: slivers of primarily positive information that appears flawless, effortless, and often like never-ending, spontaneous fun (don’t we all want to project the best parts of ourselves?).

#2. It can increase productivity in things that matter most.

To make my point on this I’m going to create a hypothetical, but realistic situation: Let’s say a nurse browses social media for 15 minutes a few times a day: once before getting out of bed, once during a break from work, a couple more times at lunch and then one more time before going to bed in the evening (for a lot of people I know, that is a conservative estimate).

Social media browsing may seem like a harmless habit. But if you add up the time over a seven day period, you are talking about eight hours a week. Eight entire hours that you will never get back! That is the same amount of time that non-nurses spend at work during a typical workday. Mindless internet and social media browsing can kill off the equivalent of almost one workday per week if you allow it to.

#3. You may fall asleep earlier and have better overall sleep.

Cell phones emit bright blue light that is meant to stimulate the brain. By looking at a cell phone before bed, it causes the brain to stop producing melatonin, which is the hormone that cues the brain that it’s time for slumber. As a result, smartphone light can disrupt the sleep cycle, which makes it hard to fall and stay asleep.

Nurses already have to forfeit some sleep as part of the job, especially mid-shift and night shift nurses. Interrupted or lack of quality sleep is linked to myriad healthcare-related issues, including many cancers, depression, and weight gain. In other words, better sleep = happy nurses.

Taking a social media break is an excellent way for nurses to give themselves a mental break.

We all need to chill out once in a while and let our minds wander. Let’s give our brains the space to do so. Living a life of intention requires making conscious changes to habits that appear harmless on the outside.

Are you a nurse in need of a social media break? What other habits do you have that are not serving you well?

HEY NURSES! Remember to sign up for your FREE COPY of “The Nurse’s Guide To Health & Self Care” E-book in the sign-up box below! (scroll down)

Additional Recommended Reading:

13 Must Have Apps For Nurses

by Sarah Jividen | Jun 20, 2019 | Nurse Life, Nurse Scrubs & Accessories

Written by Debbie Swanson from allheart.com.

Smartphone and tablet apps can clutter your screen and bombard you with unnecessary notifications—or they can make your life as a nurse much easier and less stressful. But with literally millions of apps available, how can you tell which ones are winners and which are total duds?

Luckily for you, we’ve done all the research and rounded up 13 apps that nurses should download today.

13 must have apps for nurses, nurse using app on her phone

Here are 13 must-have apps for nurses!

#1. Eponyms

Ever have the name of a disease on the tip of your tongue, but couldn’t remember the term? Eponyms is for those moments. The app contains 1,800 common and obscure medical terms and offers full-text search as well as 26 categories you can browse. Plus, you can star any eponyms you constantly forget for easy reference and use the “learn” mode to teach yourself new terms.

#2. Medical Spanish

If you don’t speak Spanish, then this app can help you learn relevant medical terms and/or communicate with patients who do. The app includes over 6,000 entries over multiple categories such as subjective/questions, objective/instructions, assessment and plan, and basic Spanish. As a bonus, the app does not require Wi-Fi and works offline.

#3. MediBabble Translator

For those nurses who need to translate more languages beyond Spanish, MediBabble is a free, professional-grade medical translation tool that is currently available in five languages—Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Haitian Creole—with more coming soon. Spanish comes preinstalled, and the other languages can be downloaded inside the app for free.

#4. NCLEX Flashcards

This app helps nurses-to-be study for all aspects of the National Council Licensure Examination test: Safe and Effective Care Environment, Health Promotion and Maintenance, Psychosocial Integrity, Physiological Integrity, and General Review. The app also offers five different learning modes—Study, Slide Show, Matching, Memorize, and Quiz—to help you learn the 2,400 flashcards loaded on the app.

#5. Skyscape Medical Library

Skyscape has partnered with more than 35 publishers to offer more than 400 “greatest hits” pieces of content from the most trusted medical resources. The free base version of the app includes Skyscape Rx (comprehensive information on thousands of brands and generics), Skyscape Clinical Calculator (medical calculator with more than 200 interactive tools), Skyscape Clinical Consult (evidence-based clinical information on hundreds of diseases and symptom-related topics) and Skyscape MedBeats™ (news and information tailored to your specialty). Other premium pieces of content are available for an in-app purchase.

#6. Pill Identifier

Drugs.com’s searchable database comes in app form, covering more than 24,000 Rx/OTC medications found in the U.S. You can search by imprint, drug name, shape and color, and the app will return information including drug images, description/indication, pregnancy category, CSA schedule, strength, and Rx/OTC availability.

#7. Nursing Central

Don’t be fooled by the old school icon. This app gets rave reviews from nurses everywhere. As the name suggests, Nursing Central combines five best-selling resources (Davis’s Drug Guide, Taber’s Medical Dictionary, Davis’s Laboratory, and Diagnostic Tests, Diseases and Disorders and Prime PubMed) all in one app. It’s an efficient, easy-to-use, one-stop-shop for many of the most common questions that nurses have.

#8. Taber’s Medical Dictionary

Speaking of Taber’s Medical Dictionary, this resource also comes as a standalone and is worth highlighting on its own merits. Taber’s contains over 65,000 terms, 1,200 photos, 32,000 audio pronunciations, 100+ videos and more than 600 patient care statements. The app also goes beyond definitions, providing nutrition and alternative therapy, medical abbreviations, symbols and units of measurement, immunization schedules, nursing diagnoses, and updates.

#9. Nurse’s Pocket Guide

Nurse’s Pocket Guide provides all the information you need to look up the signs and symptoms of medical conditions, identify the associated nursing diagnoses, and develop appropriate plans of care. The latest version of the app includes updated NANDA-I 2015-2017 diagnoses as well as NIC/NOC classifications. The app can be downloaded to your device and then used offline, so you can reference it even when you don’t have an internet connection.

#10. Medscape

The classic medical information website for clinicians can also be downloaded to your phone in the app form. The app allows you to look up medications and dosages with the Drug Reference Tool, research adverse drug combinations with the Drug Interaction Checker and find evidence-based patient care information with the Disease & Condition reference. The Medscape app also offers the latest medical news as well as other helpful resources, including step-by-step procedural articles, medical calculators, a pill ID tool, image collections, formulary information, and more.

#11. PEPID

PEPID has provided clinical and drug information to healthcare providers, hospitals, and schools for more than 23 years. The company’s app combines information about drug interactions and allergies, medical calculators, a pill identifier, a note-taking function, and more into a tool that one reviewer said: “you’ll use as much as your stethoscope.”

#12. Med Mnemonics

A mnemonic is a short rhyme, phrase, or other mental technique that makes information easier to memorize. This app comes with more than 1,900 mnemonics to help you learn terms, symptoms, and more, and it also includes the ability to add your own mnemonics to your personal version of the app. You can even submit your own mnemonics for potential inclusion in the next version of the app.

#13. NurseGrid

Nurses are notorious for their complicated, shift-based schedules, which is why a couple of RNs created NurseGrid, the first calendar just for nurses. The app lets you easily add shifts, share your availability with your manager, sync with your favorite external calendar, swap shifts with colleagues, add shifts from up to eight different worksites, and message both individuals and groups within the app itself.

If managing your schedule feels like a job in itself, NurseGrid can make things way easier on you and help remove some of the headache. From translation to dictionary references to calendars, these 13 apps cover a wide range of resources that nurses rely on every day. As a nurse, you’ve already got enough on your plate to juggle, so let these apps help you make your life easier. You deserve it!