As a busy Nurse Practitioner, I am delighted when I come across tools that save me time and energy. And that is especially true of tools that are online. My offices, both at home and the clinic, are connected to the internet. I will often pull up something that will help me with patient teaching right there in the exam room. While many resources require a purchase, there are some amazing resources available that are free.
Here are just a few site the help me explain visually various concerns that patients may have:
- http://www.InnerBody.com
- http://www.VisibleBody.com
- http://www.VisualDxHealth.com – for skin conditions.
If you are a member at NPBO, you’ve heard me say many times that “Google is my friend”. I’m always learning something new and finding new resources through them. Here is one that I just came across. It’s for the scholar in all of us…Google Scholar. What is it? Taken directly from Google:
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
While I’m on the topic of Google, they have launched Google Health. It’s a way for patients to keep their records on line, locate providers (though the link says “doctors”, but one can search all sorts of providers), and look up information about their medications and conditions. There are several pharmacies and electronic prescribing systems that are partnered with Google Health (for example Allscripts, which is available to all providers for e-prescribing).
These are just a few of many resources that are available to you and your patients. Feel free to share the tools you use in your office below. I’ll compile them into a pdf document and make it available for download.
