PT school can be tough for plenty of students. What makes it tough can be different from student to student. For some students it’s the complexity of material. For others, it’s the amount or sheer volume of material covered. Others struggle with time management and some can even struggle to stay organized.
Regardless of the reasons for the struggle, there are some powerful apps and technology that students can take advantage of that can help with these respective issues. The first step for any student who feels they may be struggling is to figure out and understand what they’re struggling with. Once they’ve identified why they’re struggling, they can begin to take appropriate action to ease the struggle.
The quick overview for the six helpful apps for PT students
There is some remarkable technology that PT students can make use of for better understanding course material, better organization of notes, effective ways to challenge/test their knowledge of material, and so on.
In this article I’ll discuss six of my favorite apps or programs I used to help make PT school much easier. There are plenty of other great ones, but these ones offer a massive bang for your buck, so to speak:
- Essential Anatomy 5 or Complete Anatomy (both by 3D4 Medical)
- Microsoft OneNote
- Zotero (zotero.org)
- Quizlet app (or quizlet.com)
- Khan Academy app (or khanacademy.org)
- The Every Dollar app (or EveryDollar.com)
Better grades are possible when you take advantage of technology
Thankfully, we live in a day and age where PT students and new grads have some great technology at their fingertips that can make the PT school grind a bit more manageable, either academically or by other means.
The key is to remember that you need to find and use what ultimately works best for YOU. Everyone’s needs may be different, but generally there are some key apps and websites that can be helpful to the vast majority of PT students, which I am therefore discussing within this blog post.
Keep in mind that none of these apps or programs are a necessity. Many a student have gone through PT school over the years without such technological assistance. But these apps can indeed make life a bit easier and help out in unique ways, should you require it.
Each and every one of these apps will continue to serve you well and help you out once you’ve graduated PT school and moved on into clinical practice
What’s great about the apps listed within this article is that they can continue to serve you well long after you’ve graduated PT school. There is always a need to brush up on material, learn it to a greater extent or continue to use it in a way that helps streamline your daily work requirements.
There are plenty more amazing apps and programs out there than mentioned within this article
Of course, I can only imagine how many other great apps, websites and resources are out there that I never came across during my academic pursuits. I’m certain that there are amazing things out there that could have made life even more manageable for me while in school. Therefore, don’t be afraid to to continually look around and find other helpful resources; I certainly only know of a fraction of them.
With that being said, by no means is what follows an exhaustive list. There are dozens of more helpful resources I used along the way (or still even use to this day).
These are simply the ones that I feel can benefit PT students the most when it comes to helping make life easier either by helping with didactic knowledge, or easing stress in some way shape or form.
My hope is that these apps and programs will help and assist you as much as they did for me, if not even more so, allowing you to crush PT school and even have some fun along the way!
Alright, let’s get into it:
Essential Anatomy 5 or Complete Anatomy by 3D4Medical
Essential Anatomy 5 Price: $14.99 (USD)
Complete Anatomy Price: Varies (see below)
Platform: iOS, Windows 10
The bottom line: If there were only one app you could have for PT school, Complete Anatomy would likely be the one.
If you have an iPad, a MacBook or a laptop (or PC) running Windows 10, a viable option to check out (and one I highly, recommend) is either Essential Anatomy 5 or Complete Anatomy. Both are by the medical software company 3D4Medical and can be game changers when it comes to better mastering anatomy and physiology.
The 3D modelling of the human body that this app provides is just game-changing material for students who really need more than just pictures on a two-dimensional sheet of paper found within an anatomy textbook.
The ability to highlight structures, remove structures, make them transparent, pull up information pertaining to that structure, or even do this on a system-level basis is just priceless. Not only do you essentially get to carry around what would otherwise be an entirely massive textbook on just your laptop or iPad, but you get to manipulate those structures however you need – something you can’t do with a book. You can make your own individual notes in the program as well. Game changer.
Is Essential Anatomy 5 or Complete Anatomy free?
While Essential Anatomy and Complete Anatomy can both be download for free, you will be limited to only viewing the skeletal system, which, while handy, isn’t likely going to be enough.
Essential Anatomy 5
Essential Anatomy 5 is an earlier iteration of the newer Complete Anatomy, and while it may be considered a more “basic version” of Complete Anatomy, rest assured that there is nothing all that basic about it. It’s what I used throughout PT school and only upgraded to Complete Anatomy at the very tail end of my program.
As of January 2020, the full version of Essential Anatomy 5 runs for $14.99 USD, which is a steal of a deal. You’re essentially getting an entire anatomical textbook that takes up way less space and has more powerful visual capabilities than a textbook.
There are also two in-app upgrades you can get (each for a small fee), that while not necessary, can be quite helpful if you’re currently working your way through gross anatomy or just really want some extra information. The two upgrades are:
- Origins & insertions
- Anatomical landmarks
Both of these upgrades only cost a few dollars a piece and are well worth it. They provide you with the ability for selecting and outlining specific anatomical features and portions of bones in addition to providing key information when highlighting or selecting those structures.
Complete Anatomy
Complete Anatomy could be considered the “big brother” version of Essential Anatomy 5. Within this app you retain all the features and abilities of Complete Anatomy 5 but with more options and even better graphics.
Complete Anatomy also offers different packages that can be purchased for access to 3D4’s massive library’s containing everything from computer animated videos showing surgical procedures, to pathological processes, and much, much more.
Most students will be more than content with just paying the basic fee for the app, which lets you access all of the different systems within the body. If you are keen to spring a bit of extra money, you can upgrade to an annual subscription that gives you access to video lectures, animated videos of surgical techniques, pathologies that occur within the body and much more.
The bottom line: If you had to spring for either an anatomy textbook or one of these two anatomy apps, I’d go with the app (this is exactly what I did in PT school). An anatomical textbook such as Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, while considered a gold-standard, is extremely expensive in comparison to one of these apps. Plus, “carrying around” this app on your iPad, laptop or even iPhone is way more convenient than lugging around a massive book wherever you go on campus.
Microsoft OneNote
Price: Free
Platform: Windows & Mac
Students in today’s age tend to use laptops and iPads for taking notes in class. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to carry around multiple binders all day long and you can save some serious money by not needing to print out the literal hundreds of pages of PowerPoint slides (even with six slides per page) and other forms of class notes that are given to you every single semester.
What you don’t want to do though when it comes to keeping all your notes on your laptop is have dozens of different folders, each with dozens of individual files containing individual PowerPoint lectures for each and every topic you cover.
For starters, this makes staying organized a challenge or being able to quickly pull up a certain set of notes. Additionally, if you don’t have a program that lets you customize your notes easily (quickly insert pictures, extra text, draw on your notes with a stylus, etc.) then you may feel rather limited with trying to take electronic notes in class.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just have everything in ONE folder and have an amazing ability to customize your notes? Well, that’s what Microsoft OneNote is for.
OneNote lets you keep everything easily accessible AND organized within ONE file
The beauty of OneNote is that it provides an incredibly easy way to organize notebooks, tabs and pages for every course, lecture and piece of information you need in the form of notes. Once my OneNote file is opened up, I can access any course, any individual lecture and any page of note within only a few seconds, thanks to its highly organized layout.
If you have a Microsoft account, you can have your OneNote file sync up to the cloud. This is an added bonus so that you can access it on multiple devices while also having the peace of mind that you won’t lose your notes. Situations like this can happen if you were to have a catastrophic hard drive failure on your laptop or if your laptop went missing or was stolen. This always gave me a ton of peace of mind since my DPT curricula OneNote file is approximately 22 gigabytes in size! It contains hundreds of PowerPoint lectures, custom notes and so on.
Another great feature is that with your Microsoft account you can use the online version of OneNote if you happen to be using a computer that doesn’t have OneNote installed locally onto the machine. The online version is a bit stripped down, but still provides plenty of functionality for easily accessing, taking and modifying your notes.
Customize your notes for more efficient studying
One of my favourite thing to do in OneNote while in PT school was to insert helpful links, images or even type or write my own text right beside the PowerPoint notes for the lecture I was currently studying or reviewing. Inserting Wikipedia links and better (or simply more) pictures than what was contained within the PowerPoint notes was always very beneficial, and I suspect could be for you as well.
Inserting hyperlinks was always a super valuable feature as well. If I found a great YouTube video that covered some specific topics within an area of my notes, I could just drop the hyperlink right by the respective PowerPoint slides for one-click access to the video.
As well, with being able to use virtual pens and virtually highlight your notes in a dozen different colors, there’s no need to carry around a small bag or box of pens and highlighters.
Here are some screenshots of my notes, as a quick visual example:
The bottom line: OneNote can be a game changer for not only staying organized, but also for having assurance that you always have more than one copy of your notes. As well, being able to have tons of easy features and ways to customize your notes is also extremely beneficial.
Zotero
Price: Free (paid storage upgrade options available)
Platform: Windows & Mac
Zotero is a free program that acts as a citation manager/reference manager for writing papers. It stores, organizes and instantly inserts references and bibliographies/works cited pages. It automatically pulls all the information from PDFs and webpages and inserts it into your documents in whatever format is required (AMA, MLA, Chicago, etc.)
The program is dead-simple to use and can not only save you a ton of marks that professors love to ding you for when having errors within your citations, but it can save you a ton of headaches if your school requires you to list your in-paper citations in AMA (American Medical Association) format, which is what my school required.
The only gripe I have about Zotero is that I didn’t find out about it until about 3/4 the way through PT school. I was told about it at the beginning of school, and had I used it then, I could have saved hours when it came to formatting the references within my documents and papers.
The AMA format, uses numbers in superscript for in-paper references/citations. Managing citations in this format without Zotero would be an absolute nightmare, but was a breeze when finishing my PICO paper, which had close to 90 references within it.
Does Zotero cost anything or is it free?
Zotero is available for free, which provides you with an account and a decent amount of storage size. If you need more storage space, you can upgrade you account.
The free account should suffice for the vast majority of students, as they can just delete research papers they’ve saved for a certain assignment or topic but no longer need. If you’re like me and more hardcore into finding all the literature within realms you’re interested in and saving everything you come across, you might need to upgrade for more storage space, but this likely wouldn’t occur until your PT schooling is over with and you continue your research-paper-gathering-endeavours thereafter.
The bottom line: Zotero is your best friend on the whole entire planet when it comes to organizing references and citations within your papers (and doing it perfectly every single time). Trust me.
Quizlet
Price: Free (option to upgrade for $1.99 USD per year)
Platform: iOS, android, web-based
Quizlet is a super handy website (and app) that serves to act as virtual flash cards, taking place of traditional, physical flash cards students write on and often carry around. As a result, you can create as many sets and categories of flashcards are you want, while always having access to them so long as you have the app or a connection to the internet.
To use Quizlet, you simply type a question or definition, etc. on one side of the card, and type the answer or key word, etc. on the other. Then, when it comes time to review the stack of cards you’ve created, you have the option to start with one side of the card or the other, and then simply by clicking (computer) or tapping (app) the card, it flips over to reveal the other side.
Another handy feature is the ability to randomize the cards or keep them in a specific order when it comes time to review each card for learning and memorization.
As well, Quizlet allows all users to make their flashcards and flashcard sets either private or public. As a result, you can find many, many sets of public cards on a topic that you can use for your studies, saving you the time of typing them yourself. There were a handful of times where I actually found flashcard packs that had been created by DPT students from my school who were a few years ahead of me, with flashcards created for the exact same course that I was currently reviewing!
Does quizlet cost anything or is it free?
The free version was always enough for me to happily use, but if you want a few extra features, such as being able to insert images and diagrams onto the flashcards, you can upgrade with a few dollars. The Quizlet Go (upgraded) version is only $1.99 per year and provides you with the ability to further customize your flashcards, while also removing ads from the app version.
Khan Academy (khanacademy.org)
Price: Free
Platform: iOS, android & web-based
Most students these days know about Khan Academy, but it’s still worth including since not everyone does. If you’re one of those students who haven’t heard of it, I’d highly recommend it.
Khan Academy is a free, online resource that is dedicated to providing free education to people all over the planet. It covers all traditional topics of school, including the biological sciences and medical sciences, which is what PT students will likely use the most. While it doesn’t have a section dedicated solely to PT, by covering extensive amounts of information on topics such as anatomy, physiology, medical school topics, and much, much more, PT students don’t necessarily need a PT-dedicated section.
The instructional videos are done well, and there’s even audio captioning for every video. PT students who use this site/resource will likely spend most of their time in the Medical Sciences sections, but there are plenty of other sections that can be incredibly helpful for PT students. One such example is is the section of the website/app solely devoted to courses in statistics, which can come in handy for DPT students as they take their mandated research methodology course(s).
Khan Academy has both a website as well as a very powerful, well-built app. While I like them both, due the the extensive amount of information and categories on the website, I enjoy the website the most (but, I’m also a bit old-school).
You don’t need to create an account to use khan academy, but if you do, you can track your progress and all sorts of unique parameters for all the material that you watch, practice or cover for every section of the site.
How much have I used Khan Academy over the years, you ask? Well, throughout my years of academic upgrading and PT school, I’ve wracked up nearly one-million points on Khan Academy, which hopefully tells you just how helpful I found it to be and how frequently I used it.
EveryDollar.com
Price: Free
Platform: iOS, Android & web-based
This one doesn’t fall directly in the realms of PT curricula-assisting technology, but it does fall largely dead-center within the student-life realm. EveryDollar is a free budgeting app that can be used via the everydollar.com website or downloadable app. The student life is no joke when it comes to financial stress, and PT school will certainly pour on the financial stress at times.
EveryDollar is designed to help people (students or non-students) with creating monthly financial budgets in order to begin the path to less financial stress, better spending habits and ultimately the path to financial freedom. It is a free app that doesn’t cost one single penny.
One of the reasons why I believe this app is so beneficial is due to its ability to help PT students create and live within monthly budgets in a way that can reduce the amount of student loan debt the incur throughout their time in PT school. This is, of course, provided they create strict budget and stay within it.
To get started with the EveryDollar app, just create an account and you’ll be well on your way to helping decrease your monthly financial stresses.
It’s worth mentioning that there is another app & website that aims to do the same thing that EveryDollar does. The app is called Mint ( or you can use their website, mint.com), and does a very good job with helping individuals to create a budget and gain a better understanding as to how they can set themselves up for better financial goals and spending habits.
Mint works great as well, but I prefer EveryDollar a bit more, but I have used them both, so if you want another app to try besides EveryDollar, you can try Mint.
Closing remarks
The popular term “work smart, not hard” tends to be a popular saying these days. And if there’s any truth to that statement, then finding the right resources (websites, apps, etc.) can indeed allow PT students to work, study and learn smart.
PT school is all about exploring and gathering as many helpful resources as possible when it comes to all aspects of the student’s academics and personal pursuits. Once gathered, it becomes all about putting those resources to work for you in ways that can keep you organized, help you learn and understand material more quickly and effectively, ultimately cutting down on your stress (in school or outside of it).
You’ll likely have plenty of other challenges that come along for the ride during your days of PT school. Some challenges may be more outside of PT school, while some maybe directly within it. With this being the case, you might as well find the resources and apps that can help reduce as many of these challenges as possible.
Find the ones that work for you and put them to use. Even just using one or two of them can make a noticeable difference when it comes to helping you stay organized, learn material or even cutting down on stress. And when you do any of these, you can better crush PT school.
And when it comes to crushing PT school, it’s a pretty fun feeling.
Grind hard. You got this.
Hi! I’m Jim Wittstrom, PT, DPT, CSCS, Pn1.
I am a physical therapist who is passionate about all things pertaining to strength & conditioning, human movement, injury prevention and rehabilitation. I created StrengthResurgence.com in order to help others become stronger and healthier. I also love helping aspiring students and therapists fulfill their dreams of becoming successful in school and within their clinical PT practice. Thanks for checking out my site!