Med Students! Get Epocrates Essentials for Free - Limited Time!

Author: Brittany Chan, MBA


Attention med students! For the first two weeks of August only, you can get the Epocrates Essentials app, normally $159 for a one-year subscription, for FREE. It's one of my favorite apps for clinical rotations. I just upgraded for free and can't wait to try out all the new features, including information about drugs, dosing, diseases, treatments, and lab interpretation.

This app is available for iPod touch/iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, and Windows Mobile platforms.

Get it here.

The Dangers of Texting and Driving

Author: Brittany Chan

Imagine this scenario: You’re driving to meet a friend for lunch in the middle of your busy day. Suddenly, you hear your phone beep from inside your pocket. Traffic is fairly slow, so you dig your phone out. It’s a text from your friend: "Where r u?" You look up at the road; the vehicle in front of you is still a few car lengths ahead. "Coming," you type, stopping to glance up every few seconds. You send the message, drop the phone in your lap, and continue safely on your way.

Except some people aren’t so lucky. They look up, mid-"LOL," to see a pedestrian's panicked eyes right before he hits the windshield. Or hear the frightened screams of the other passengers as the car careens over the median into opposing traffic.

We love technology. We love being connected, we love our smart phones, our emails, our instant communications. It’s easy to think that one text sent on the way to work is relatively harmless and can even save time in our hectic schedules. But texting and driving has become a major public safety issue, and has resulted in many tragic deaths and senseless injuries. Not surprisingly, teens are the most common victims.

Here are a couple unsettling statistics from The National Safety Council (taken from the Cell Phone Crash Estimate Fact Sheet):

- Texting and other cell-phone use (both handheld and hands-free) contributes to 28% of traffic accidents.
- You are 8 to 23 times more likely to get into a crash if you’re text messaging while driving.

Listen to Heart Sounds with Your iPhone!

Author: Brittany Chan

There's been tremendous hype about the new blood pressure cuff for iPhone. What if you could also use your iPhone to listen for abdominal gurgles, wheezes, or even the heartbeat of your unborn child?

The iStethoscope Expert app makes this possible, and best of all, it's free! You can use your device's microphone to listen for heart, lung, and bowel sounds. The app has a built-in noise canceler that will help amplify the sound of interest. If your device does not have a microphone, or if you'd simply like to enhance the sound, you may purchase the CardioTech electronic stethoscope peripheral by Zetris for $24.99.

Notable features of this app include:
- Guides to heart, lung, and bowel sounds, including phonocardiograms, audio demonstrations and text explanations.
- Sound interpreters that help determine the underlying pathology of an abnormal sound.
- Stethoscope sound library including over 60 sounds.
- Hear fetal heart sounds at 20 weeks.
- Record, send, and save sounds for review.