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Essentials of Nursing Practice, a free health course on Tomo

Essentials of Nursing Practice

Develop the foundational clinical skills, assessment techniques, and safety protocols essential for modern nursing. Learn how to monitor vital signs, perform head-to-toe evaluations, safely administer medications, and prioritize care under pressure.

Like Duolingo, but for Essentials of Nursing Practice. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

26 levels across 3 sections, about 52 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Core Bedside Skills, Clinical Assessment and Administration, and Clinical Judgment and Deterioration. It starts from scratch.

26 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Nelly the Nurse Nightingale, the guide who teaches the Essentials of Nursing Practice course
Essentials of Nursing Practice
with Nelly the Nurse Nightingale
26
Levels
3
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Essentials of Nursing Practice

  • A vital sign cannot be judged safe or dangerous without comparing it to what is typical for that specific person
  • A number that looks low on paper can be completely healthy for a conditioned athlete
  • A steep fall from a person's usual baseline indicates trouble, even if the number sits near what books call normal
  • Breathing rate usually speeds up before heart rate or blood pressure changes when a patient begins to get sick
  • A rise in breaths per minute is the body's fastest way to compensate for stress, infection, or failing circulation
  • Normal resting breathing in adults is typically 12 to 20 breaths per minute, so rates above 24 demand attention
  • Selecting the right cuff width based on arm size is essential before recording blood pressure
  • An undersized cuff requires extra pressure to squeeze the artery shut, displaying a false high reading
  • An oversized cuff transmits pressure too easily, recording a false low reading
  • A pulse oximeter only measures how saturated red blood cells are with oxygen, not how deeply or frequently someone breathes
  • A patient who is hypoventilating or barely breathing can maintain normal oxygen percentages for several minutes, especially on supplemental oxygen, while dangerously retaining carbon dioxide
  • Evaluating breathing requires watching chest rise and counting breath rate, not just trusting the monitor clip
  • Infection causes the brain's thermostat to reset to a higher set point, making the patient feel cold and shiver as their temperature rises
  • Heatstroke occurs when external ambient heat overwhelms the body's cooling mechanisms, not because the brain chose to raise its set point
  • Drug-induced temperature spikes often involve impaired muscle control or autonomic dysfunction rather than an immune response
  • Medical asepsis ('clean technique') lowers the number of germs to limit their spread during routine care
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Essentials of Nursing Practice the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Making Sense of Vital Signs

A marathon runner has a resting blood pressure of 94/60. How should you view this?

Get it right to open this lesson and 25 more in the app.

Course map

Where Essentials of Nursing Practice takes you

  1. 1

    Core Bedside Skills

    • Reading and Responding to Vital Signs
    • Aseptic Technique and Infection Control
    • Safe Patient Transfers and Positioning
  2. 2

    Clinical Assessment and Administration

    • The Focused Head-to-Toe Assessment
    • Administering Medications Without Error
    • Monitoring IV Therapy and Fluid Balance
  3. 3

    Clinical Judgment and Deterioration

    • Structuring Handoffs and Recognizing Deterioration
    • Prioritizing Care Under Pressure

3 sections · 8 units · 26 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

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How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Essentials of Nursing Practice is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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