Medical Reviewer: Jordan P. Roberts, PA-C
3 User-Friendly Clinical Calculators Made for the Point of Care
Point of care clinical calculators can be a clinical decision support system to make your life easier, improve outcomes, & earn CME credits
Three Clinical Calculators + CME Bonus
If you are a clinician who values efficiency in your workflow, you might use clinical decision support systems on occasion. Many medical apps for healthcare professionals fall into this category, including point of care medical calculators.
We'll look at three trusted clinical calculators you can definitely – wait for it – count on.
Unquantifiably hilarious math jokes aside, this review contains some truly helpful tools. All entries here can be downloaded and used for free.
Only one, however, also offers category 1 CME credits as an additional feature. That's MDCalc, which is also the first on our list today.
MDCalc Clinical Calculators + CME
There’s a good chance you or someone you know is already familiar with the extensive library of clinical calculators MDCalc has developed.
It is completely free, both to download the app and to use any and all of the calculators you want. They've truly revolutionized access to FOAMed around the world.
The nearing 300 calcs also have all undergone a rigorous evidence appraisal, which is right there for you to see. In all, there are incredible insights, use criteria, and other clinical pearls and pitfalls you can put to use immediately.
Often, this comes straight from the calculators’ creators, who you may know from the lofty author section of the sentinel, landmark study describing the new tool. Additionally, outside experts weigh in on the evidence to ensure a broad perspective is presented.
MDCalc is unique among clinical calculator apps because they also offer the option to earn CME credits. Their CME plans are a relatively new offering, but they are built to fit any CME budget and credit requirement you may have.
Download MDCalc on the App Store for free.
If earning continuing medical education credits is important to you, learn more about purchasing a CME plan here.
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Merck Manual for Healthcare Professionals
Clinical Calculator Section
The name ‘Merck Manual’ is a long-standing institution within the healthcare industry. It is well-known to physicians, veterinarians, and our patients alike. Well, maybe the veterinarians' patients.
Merck Manual is more than a clinical calculator. It is a behemoth collection of medical references, news, and resources. One of those resources is list of clinical calculators covering 20 specialties from cardiovascular disease to pulmonary disorders.
There are also general purpose calcs that are surprisingly (almost embarrassingly) helpful in the clinical environment. That’s stuff like temperature, weight, volume, and other measurement conversions they don’t teach us as kids in school in the United States.
Less shamefully to be caught using are their special subject calculators, addressing topics we should all admit we forgot a long time ago. Can you explain Bayesian statistics, likelihood ratios, positive and negative predictive values without double checking first? Yeah, me neither.
Download Merck Manual Professional Version in the App Store or Google Play.
Calculate by QxMD
QxMD turns recent scientific findings into practical, handheld tools with a pleasant user interface and intuitive features.
The tool contains more than 400 unique clinical calculators and clinical decision support systems that can be used at the point of care with minimal disruption to your workflow.
Download QxMD from the App Store or take it for a spin here first:
Calculating Results...
There are hundreds of additional apps out there that integrate clinical calculators into their featureset. However, these three are comprehensive, authoritative, and easy to use at the point of care.
If you are interested in clinical efficiency, professional development, or medical technology, we think you’d enjoy our other pieces on clinical decision support systems and medical apps that can make your life noticeably easier.
Further Reading
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