Filling The Void And Feeling The Love

Working bedside as a nurse takes its toll. I’ve been punched, kicked, yelled at and (much) more through the course of my career– sometimes all in one shift. If you’re a nurse, this isn’t anything new, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it happens. It’s no wonder burnout is so high in our profession; but our patients aren’t the only factor causing us grief.

When our founder Joe, a fellow nurse, and I began digging into the issues facing nurses today, it was painfully obvious that nurses lacked modern tools to do the most basic tasks. (I’d give it about an 8 out of 10 on the Wong-Baker). I’ve written about this before, and brought light to the fact that nurses are rarely involved in department decisions that affect them the most.

After moving from the bedside to the desk-side seven months ago, I was blown away by the amount of simple, powerful technology businesses have at their disposal for nearly every task. Nursing has been left behind, but NurseGrid is changing that.

At NurseGrid, we take user feedback seriously. We read every review that comes in, as they come in, and log every piece of feedback in a document that we review weekly. Our free mobile app for nurses is the culmination of thousands of pieces of feedback from nurses. The result has been amazing. In a year and a half, we have over 240,000 downloads, hundreds of 5-star reviews, and tens of thousands of departments using our app to connect with each other, share schedules, and more. We’re proud to be one of the most successful nurse apps in the market.

There is no secret sauce here. We just listen. And we build. Well, actually, if there is one secret, I’m going to share it with you now. It’s that we created this specifically for nurses and nursing departments as our largest cohort of clinicians (that includes you, CNAs, HUCs, techs, and others!). We didn’t get greedy and try to capture the rest of the world while we were at it; we’re focused on improving your lives, and changing healthcare from the inside out in the process. The word cloud at the top of this post represents all the words written in our app reviews; the larger the word, the more often it shows up in our reviews. Our office feels the love!

This nurse-centric approach is being applied to our other application, too. NurseGrid Manager is our department tool that connects managers and other unit administrators with their staff through our successful mobile app. We’re listening to managers too, and making this application better and better every day. Turns out nurse managers were looking for an opportunity to be heard as well!

NurseGrid is proud to serve the millions of nurses out there on the front lines, caring for every type of patient and taking the brunt of our healthcare system’s challenges. It’s about time you had more than a pat on the back and actually received something to make your lives a little easier. Because there are only so many punches, kicks, and screams you can take before you need to schedule a day off for yourself.

But when you do, there’s an app for that.