Staying Organized with Nurse Backpack

Hi friends! Long time no blogpost! As you guys may know, I just finished up my new grad residency and I'm officially on my own now. Yes, I'm terrified. Yes, I'm excited. No, I don't feel completely ready, but hey - that's the beauty of nursing, right?

Residency has been absolutely amazing. It's incredible to think how much I've learned in the past couple of months working as an RN with my amazing preceptors. Not gonna lie, it was hard. But thinking about how hard I worked makes me feel proud of myself. I said I would do it, and I did it.

From graduating nursing school, taking NCLEX, getting my nursing license, all my required vaccinations, credentials, and starting my new job, I've learned the importance of being super organized. Joke's on me for thinking I can just jump into my nursing career swimmingly - nope. *Insert picture of me drowning in nursing paperwork* I mean, collecting records of each and every vaccination I've ever received, every annual TB skin test and flu shot can get hectic. Not to mention, I'm still learning the way around the hospital to the employee health office, my supervisors' names, and just about everything else included in starting a new career.

That's why I'm so grateful to have discovered Nurse Backpack, which has saved my life in helping me getting all my necessary nursing stuff all into 1 place. And it's not that old manila folder that's about to bust. We all have that one manila folder. Instead, it's an app where you upload photos and expiration dates of each and every certification, diploma, skill, specialty, membership, and state license. There's my American Heart Association BLS card, my NRP certification, my Georgia Board of Nursing license, my Sigma Theta Tau membership, and hopefully as my skill set starts to grow, I can store even more of my certifications into the app. #goaldigger

I think the best part about the Nurse Backpack app is that it's free! And as a new grad, there's nothing better that free stuff, am I right? We can gather all of our credentials, resumes, documents, work history, etc all in 1 easy to use app so that we don't have to scramble through papers and certifications to give to our employers. Because staying on top of our renewals and credential expiration dates is so important for us to continue practicing, it's incredible to have everything in one simple app. You can access everything you need so easily, plus it reminds you of expiration dates so you can stay on top of your nursing game without worrying about your license expiring (or your managers nagging).

Nurse Backpack also easily creates a resume for you and allows you to send it to anyone - HR, recruiters, hospitals, agencies, you name it. Because you guys know that no matter how much we love our jobs, we sometimes can get curious about what other opportunities are out there for us so that we can continue growing and learning. I think that this part is especially useful for travel nurses so that no matter what state you're practicing in or what agency you're working for, everything you need is in one safe place.

So instead of spending time micromanaging our work history and credentials, we can focus on saving lives instead. I highly recommend Nurse Backpack to all my nurse friends out there. It makes it so easy to reference important paperwork when we need it most, and makes my life so easy.

How do you stay organized? Share your tips and tools down below! Click here to give Nurse Backpack a try. Available on both iOS and Google Play today.