My Favourite Apps for Nursing School

Hey everyone,

As many of you know, I used an iPad Pro + Apple Pencil to get me through Nursing School, so today I really wanted to discuss some of the apps that I think are super useful to get you through your classes.

Personally, I really loved using my iPad, because it's the perfect meeting point between using a laptop and taking notes by hand. I was still able to write out my notes, which I find to be the best way for me to learn, but I was also able to keep all of my notes together in one compact place, no matter where I was.

Notability
Notability is hands down the app I used the most throughout Nursing school and probably the one app I would say that I recommend the most. It is super versatile - you can type up documents, as you would on a laptop, but you can also use the Apple pencil to not only write out your notes, but also write on top of PDF's and PowerPoint slides, which to me was the most useful feature. You can neatly organize all your classes in folders, and export or autosave your notes to the service of your choice (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, etc.). It's $13.99 at the app store, which at first I thought was a little steep, but definitely worth it, considering it's an app I used every single day.

Khan Academy
One thing I always stress to people asking about how to adequately prepare for Nursing exams and how to master topics that are more challenging is to use resources beyond your course notes and textbooks! I'm a very visual learner, and I'm also someone who needs examples and practice questions to understand (especially with things like math and chemistry). Khan Academy is SUPER helpful for that! You can watch Khan Academy videos on YouTube, but I find their app to be SO well organized and useful! They have an entire "Health and Medicine" section, which is a lifesaver for Physiology and Pathology. They also have a section with NCLEX practice questions and videos of important topics to review.

Quizlet
If you aren't already using Quizlet, you are doing yourself a huge disservice! Quizlet is essentially an app where you can create "study sets", which are essentially virtual cue cards that you can study off of! These are especially great for classes that require memorizing a lot of definitions. You can create your own study sets and practice with them, but also you can see ones created by other people who choose to share them! This can be so helpful to review past topics you may need a refresher on (and if you're lucky or if you go to a big school, it's likely someone has created study sets for your specific course, so you have even more material to study from!).

YouTube
Yup, trusty YouTube. One of my past clinical instructors gave me some of the best advice that I always like to pass on to those early in their Nursing school journey. Whenever you have a little free or quiet time (for example, while having your morning coffee, sitting on the bus, cooking dinner, mindlessly scrolling on Instagram 😜), just play ONE YouTube video reviewing a topic you recently covered in class. Two of my favourite channels that I always relied on for reviewing topics I struggled with are Osmosis and Armando Hasudungan. 

Google Docs
Google Docs is a must have app for me. It makes group projects SO much easier, since you can all work on a document collaboratively, but it's also great for collaborative note taking in class with friends. I also love that everything autosaves and it is super easy to share documents with others.

Hopefully you guys found this helpful! Do any of you use an iPad for school? What are your most used apps? Let me know down below!!

xo