Best NP Apps for Learning, Scheduling, Note-Taking, & More

Want to order groceries directly to your door? There’s an app for that!

Want to edit your vacation photos? There’s an app for that!

Want to know exactly when to take a bathroom break during a movie so that you don’t miss anything important? Yep, there’s an app for that! (Seriously, there is.)

And yes, whether you’re a nurse practitioner student looking for apps to help you study, or you’re a practicing NP looking for great medical resources, there are apps for those things too! If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the options and aren’t sure which ones are worth using, don’t worry.

In this post, we’ll list a number of helpful and essential NP apps that can support you at any point along your professional journey.

Let’s begin by checking out some of the best NP apps that are more geared towards students. As you’ll see, there are some great options available for NPs in training. 

Best NP Apps for Students

Scheduling Apps

Todoist

You may be juggling multiple classes and clinical hours and have a lot of assignments, projects, and exams to prepare for. 

Todoist is a great option for managing it all. You can organize your schedule by class, sync your to-do lists with a calendar, and prioritize tasks.

This app has a free option, as well as a professional package starting at $4/month, making it a very affordable choice. 

Note-Taking Apps

Evernote

If you’re looking for an app to help you organize all your course notes, one option is Evernote.

With Evernote, you can organize your notes into notebooks for each course, and even scan and search your own handwritten notes! There are additional features that assist you with time management and scheduling.

Evernote has a free, baseline version, or an upgraded version that costs $129.99/year.

RemNote

Another great note-taking app is RemNote. It allows for superb note organization, plus the really cool feature of being able to create flashcards from your own notes! No more piles of hand-written index cards!

RemNote doesn’t have a free version, but as a student, you can expect to pay between $6-8/month. 

Time Management and Studying Apps

OneNote

One of the highest rated apps for NP students is Microsoft’s OneNote. It’s a component of the Microsoft Office 365 suite of programs, but is also available for FREE with a valid school email address.

If you use Microsoft programs for other projects, OneNote is a great way to stay synced with them, all in one place. 

Qbank Apps

SMNP Reviews Primary Care Question Bank

There are lots of NP question bank apps out there, but we personally recommend SMNP Reviews Primary Care Question Bank.

For $59/month, you’ll have access to 1,500 board-style questions (including three practice exams), plus you can keep track of your progress and switch between a phone, tablet, or laptop with ease. 

Best Apps for Practicing NPs

To say there are a lot of medical apps out there to help with your clinical decisions as an NP would be an understatement. 

So, to help, I picked out my five favorite apps that I use in my clinical practice. (These are also great for students to use in their clinical rotations.)

NP Medical Apps

UpToDate

First up is UpToDate. It does have a price tag of $579/year as an individual user (with additional subscription options), but it includes the most current knowledge on disease processes and medications.

My favorite parts of this app are the interactive pathways and decision trees, plus the fact that I can earn continuing education credits just by searching for information. 

Epocrates

Then there’s Epocrates. This is another excellent resource for clinicians that not only offers information for medical decision making, but a ton of other features including its medication interaction checker, pill ID, and ICD-10 codes.

There’s a free version of Epocrates available, so you can check that out and see if you like navigating the app. If you want access to all the resources in the app, an individual plan costs about $175/year.

Medscape

Another free resource for clinicians is Medscape, which offers peer-reviewed medical articles, drug interaction checkers, and a pill ID, just to name a few.

My absolute favorite part of Medscape is that you don’t need an internet connection to access the content. You can download the disease and medication database (using an internet connection) to your mobile device and have access to it all the time. This was a game changer when I was in rural areas with limited internet and cellular data access!

MDCalc

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop resource for medical calculators, check out MDCalc. This is another free resource for clinicians, and you can also earn continuing education credits when you use it.

MDCalc has a wide range of medical calculators, from creatinine clearance, ASCVD risk, depression screening tools, and more!

Harriet Lane Handbook

And lastly, if you work with children, you should have the Harriet Lane Handbook. This is one of the top pediatric references available, and it can be downloaded on your mobile device. 

A one- year subscription costs $54.95 and gives you access to detailed information on pediatric conditions, plus an excellent medication formulary with a dose calculator for all of those weight-based medications!

Stress Relief Apps

Just as important as it is to have great medical reference apps, you need to have a way to decompress and destress after a busy day seeing patients.

Here’s some of the best NP apps for stress relief:

Headspace

One of the top-rated stress relief apps is Headspace. You can use it to learn how to meditate, use coping mechanisms to deal with stress, and develop better sleep hygiene.

Try it out for $12.99/month, or make a commitment to your mental health and pay $41.99 for a one-year subscription.

Happify

Another great app for stress relief is Happify. If you’re like me and want a more interactive, game-like approach to stress relief, then Happify might be a good choice for you. You can work through numerous activities in the app that will help you deal with stress, sleep better, and have less anxiety.

The price tag for Happify is $14.99/month or $139.99/year.

Best NP Apps: Final Thoughts

There are so many resources out there, so it can be easy to get bogged down with multiple apps. Hopefully you found this post useful and it gave you some good information about the best NP apps that can really help you succeed in every stage of your career. Give them a try—you may find they really help out!

Looking for more (free!) content to help you along your NP journey? Check out these other posts on the SMNP Reviews blog!

• Online vs. In-Person NP Board Prep: Which Should You Choose?
• Nurse Practitioner Burnout: How to Recognize, Manage, & Prevent It
• How to Land Your First NP Job After Graduation