How to Survive Nursing School

How To Surviving Nursing School

Congratulations! You got into a nursing program! I know you’ve worked hard to get in. Countless hours spent acing those prerequisite courses to make sure you were competitive have finally paid off. Welcome to the biggest shake-up in your academic career. Nursing school is not for the weak.

Nursing Tests are a new animal

I know what you’re thinking. It’s going to be fine you’re a straight “A” student, right? How bad can it be? So far in school, your classes have been based on your ability to learn a subject and repeat the knowledge on a test. If you are good at retaining the information you just needed to answer the questions correctly then you can forget it and move on to the next. Nursing school doesn’t care that you know oranges are orange. They want you to be able to tell them which orange is the most orange, and which orange should be eaten first.

What?

You heard me. Which orange is the priority orange? You have 1.5 minutes per question to figure it out.

Nursing school tests are all about critical thinking, priority setting, and applying the knowledge you have to care for patients. The tests aren’t about what you know, they are about the decisions you are going to make with that knowledge. All the answers to the multiple-choice questions may be correct but your job is to determine which one is the MOST correct. Or in some cases which one do you do FIRST?

Don’t forget SATA questions.

For those that don’t know SATA, these are the Select All That Apply that show up on your tests and the N-CLEX. These questions give you a scenario and five choices and you need to choose the correct answers from them. All the choices may be wrong, all the choices may be right, or some mix of the choices in between. You only get the point for the question if you select all the right choices and only the right choices. That means even if you select the right choices but also one wrong one, you miss the entire question. If you select 3/4 correct choices, you miss the entire question even if you didn’t choose a wrong choice. It is brutal.

And these are just the theory tests. This doesn’t include skills testing, clinical, clinical paperwork, or your sim labs.

How to be successful in nursing school

So now that we’ve established some of the challenges, you’re probably wondering the best way to be successful. I can’t speak to your learning needs or learning styles, but I can hook you up with some tools to help you along the way. Every program is going to have different requirements. But the main goal of every program is getting you to pass the N-CLEX so you can be licensed as an RN.

5 Tips for being successful in nursing school:

#1) Find your study buddy

This is imperative to find at least one person that you work well with. It doesn’t have to be someone who learns the same way you do. This person just must be willing to be accountable with you so you can keep each other on track. Creating a routine for a productive study session can help you grasp difficult content together. We all process information differently and they may pick up important things that will help you make good decisions on the test. Having a large group can become distracting and unproductive so make sure you are spending your time in the right environment to learn.

#2) Create a calendar that works for you

Staying on top of due dates and schedules is critical. Find a format that you can glance at a plan out your week. Many of the classes or SIMS may have hours of pre-work that need to be completed. Looking ahead can save you from being up the night before trying to complete the tasks, or from losing participation points. It seems time-consuming at first but being organized is the only way to be successful. This may include blocking off specific times to study. Having it on the calendar and treating it as a requirement will help put you into the mindset to do the work

#3) Use outside resources if it isn’t making sense

We all get those instructors that just don’t teach things in a way we can learn easily. In nursing school, you are learning not only how all the body systems work, but also the disease process, how to treat it, and all the pharmacology to make sure you’re treating your patients correctly and safely. Your best option is learning the information in more than one way. Combine learning styles to solidify your information retention. If you are a visual learner, you are not going to retain the information well just listening to lecture. If you’re auditory reading the book may not stick for you. Fortunately, we live in the age of the internet and there are options for you! It may not be directly what you need to know for a test but learning the basics can help you make the best decisions on the test and give you the best chance for success.

* See below for awesome online resources to help you succeed.

#4) Talk to your instructors

If you are just not getting it, talk to the instructor. Ask for a tutoring session or 15 minutes to ask your questions. They want you to succeed. Often you have a grasp on the concepts, but you haven’t mapped them out in a way that makes sense to the disease process. A quick check-in can be the key to unlocking the path that makes it all make sense. We have a hard time admitting when we can’t conquer something. Don’t let your pride get in the way of passing the test. And remember it’s not just about passing school, it’s about the care you will be able to provide your patients after you get through the program.

#5) Take it one day at a time

It is so easy to be overwhelmed when you’re looking ahead at everything you are going to have to do to get through. It starts looking impossible, which can lead to overwhelming anxiety and stress that makes it impossible to retain information. Look at everything as a task list. They are just boxes to check. Make a list that correlates with your calendar and mark them off as you go. Even something as easy as checking off homework assignments or a study session can give you a positive boost. The sense of achievement and control will help pull you out of that spiral and keep you on track for success.

Online Resources for Surviving Nursing School

Nurse Sarah, RN.

Meet your new best friend, Nurse Sarah. She has an entire series on YouTube that breaks down complicated concepts to help nursing students learn or review nursing principles. She talks quickly so you may have to pause and go back but her FREE videos present common knowledge you will be tested on. Search Nurse Sara, RN, and the subject you are studying to see if she has a video that will help you piece together the information. She also has quizzes on her content that can help you prepare and test your knowledge. Identify gaps in your understanding so you know what to review before you take the test. You can find her home page https://www.registerednursern.com/ for links to all her videos and quizzes.

An example of her video “How to study for nursing fundamentals” can be found here: https://youtu.be/ipClvnSA3Bs which is a great foundation to start building your nursing knowledge base. I can attribute most of my success during the covid lockdown to Nurse Sarah and watching her videos when I couldn't grasp the content through the zoom classes we attended.

Picmonic

If you haven’t heard of picmonic you are missing out. Especially for visual learners (like me) this platform created for medical and nursing students is a collaboration of pictures and mnemonics to help you understand and learn disease processes, pharmacology and so much more. You can create a FREE account or a paid account. They are located online and in the app store for android and apple. My personal preference before a test is to take a hot bath the night before and review every picmonic I can find on the subject I’ll be tested over. This helps me relax and get a good night's sleep before the test while using my time to still study. Picmonic's humorous stories and characters, like the “Fever Beaver” can be helpful in answering test questions based on priorities or treatments. You can check out their website here: https://www.picmonic.com/

These are only two resources of many, but they are the two I have found to be helpful. Others you may want to look into are Kahn Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org or Nursing.com: https://nursing.com/ I have heard good reviews from other students but haven’t used them myself. It may be worth starting the free trial to see if they work for you.

Now Crush It

Hopefully, this has been some helpful information for you. Nursing school will not be easy. But it is one of the most rewarding fields to work in. Once you have your RN there are hundreds of career paths to choose from. Congratulations on making it this far! Now go out and crush it.

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Feeling isolated? Feeling like starting nursing school after covid has you at a disadvantage? You are not alone! Check out a letter I wrote to my class during the lockdown.

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