There’s an App for that…

Medicos often have a pendant for gadgetry. Anaesthetists and others involved with machines that go ‘bing’ (I’m thinking critical care and EM) have a reputation for being “propellor heads“.

But there’s an advantage to being tech-savvy. I was reading a post on the excellent BroomeDocs this week, concerning the possibility of awake fibreoptic intubation and remembered ‘there’s an App for that’.

So here’s a collection of some Apps that I reckon are useful for rural docs.

(i) awake fibreoptic intubation

Well-written and succinct guide to AFOI and topicalisation of the airway from FANZCAs. Useful.

(ii) Pain tricks

Brilliant app for kids and their parents, prior to painful procedures. Recommended

(iii) iSimulate

Brings high-fidelity scenario-learning to your rural hospital – great for encouraging teamwork and troubleshooting problems in logistics-over-strategy in both ED and Theatre. Inspired work!

(iv) DrawMD Anesthesia/CriticalCare

DrawMD have made several modules available for free. I use the anaesthesia one to explain LMA and ETT pre-op, as well as talk through spinal vs epidural for my parturients.

(v) FlipBoard

Awesome. Much better if you import all RSS feeds to Google reader, then import the GoogleReader feeds to FlipBoard. Et voila – LITFL, Weingart, Resus.ME, BroomeDocs, the PHARM etc all in one place.

(vi) Patient.co.uk

Well, I’d prefer it if there was an Australian version, but this allows me to pull up patient information leaflets quickly to aid explanations

(vii) Numbers, Keynote, Pages

Slimmed down versions of the OSX classics. Easy import/expore from the flaky MS Office suite. I use Numbers to generate invoices for my in-patient and theatre fee-for-service billings, Keynote to play around with presentations and Pages to write angry letters to the Health Minister.

(viii) Perry?

Where’s Perry the Platypus? Brilliant game for kids and (ahem) older kids.

(ix) PocketMBS

For all those hard-to-remember MBS item numbers

(x) GoodReader

Where would I be without it? All my favourite documents & papers in one place, easily categorised and available in seconds. Got a dispute over contracts and can’t remember the terms of clause 13.2.1? GoodReader provides. Want to stash that interesting paper on apnoeic pre-pxygenation somewhere for quick reference for sceptical anaesthetic colleagues? GoodReader is the place.

Of course, the iPad makes a perfect vehicle for all this. I’ve begin to collate all my emergency resources into GoodReader along with my previous ‘Rural Theatre Checklists‘ so that information I need is always at my fingertips and easily updated.

Any other suggestions?

2 thoughts on “There’s an App for that…”

  1. Pingback: Difficult intubation deliberation - Broome Docs

  2. I am very impressed with your study. It is a credit to you. Your web site is awesome also.

    It so happens I am giving an anaesthetic lecture next Thursday at our local hospital and I would like to show your Website video and other resources if you wouldn’t mind. It would be more sophisticated than I could do and is very relevant to our rural hospital. Could I have your permission for this?

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