Top iPhone Games for the Not-So-Professional Medical Professional

This is a guest post by Greg Bartlett.

Top iPhone Games for the Not-So-Professional Medical Professional

Yes, everyone has at least one—don’t pretend otherwise. There are plenty of distractions for doctors on their smartphones, but few games really provide the kind of flexibility a medical professional on the go needs. Here are a few popular options anyone can pick up, play—and when they really need to—put down.

Tetris – Yes, this does seem to be the obvious choice, but the former Soviet Union’s patented productivity killer is an essential time-waster to add to your collection. Controls are solid, graphics fresh. Best of all, a pause and save feature allows the player to keep his or her hard-earned status when the patient finally asks what exactly they’re doing the phone.

Fruit Ninja – Not guaranteed to improve surgical skills, this addictive little 99 cent app is about slicing fruit. Lots of fruit, in many different ways. Wouldn’t recommend it as an outlet for work-related frustration, as the screen does tend to get a little messy—both from fingerprints and the color splashes of disgorged fruit juice.

Bejeweled – Actually, this extremely popular app might be a little too addictive to place on this list. Players can easily get lost in the mesmerizing cascade of colored shapes for an hour or more, and that might not be the best thing for a doctor waiting on some CAT scan results. Forget about it.

Glass Tower 2 – Currently the most popular free game on the iPhone market, Glass Tower 2 is an evolution of the Tetris block-stacking concept, except here things have a tendency to fall apart—thanks to temperature changes, shifting gravity, and so on—if the player isn’t careful. This app comes with a limited number of levels and options, but users can buy one or two additional level packs for 99 cents each. Certainly worth a try.

Turf Wars – Augmented reality games that take advantage of GPS trackers are all the rage these days, and one of the most popular is the iPhone’s very own Turf Wars. This GPS-enabled game allows the player to “take over” parts of his or her own city, running location-based missions and making raids on competing players’ territory. Players can pull up a live map showing their exploits, and their rep is quickly broadcast to anyone nearby. While this real-time game may require a greater time investment than most, the chance for a doctor to take over his or her own hospital make this free app worth the download.

Greg Bartlett is a guest author who specializes in writing about GPS technology for Rocky Mountain Tracking, Inc.