Failed CRNE exam being good prepared

Then you're in danger of making the same mistake again! Memorising questions is not going to help. You need to understand the rationale behind why an answer is correct. Learn what it is that makes one answer more correct than another even though more than one may look right.

Jan's advice is excellent plus there are other strategies contained in the forward of the Mosby book that will also help.

I admit I haven't done CRNE yet but I did pass N-CLEX at 75 first time & am a foreign educated nurse. Although the exam questions for CRNE are going to be different to N-CLEX I believe the strategies are very similar, from the studying I have done so far.

el_2008 - I took the same exam as you in Feb 2008, but didnt think there was same questions as in the Prep-guide. As the others have advised you I encourage you NOT to try memorizing the questions and answers from the prep-guide if you want to succeed. What I would advise you to do is to use the prep-guide only to understand what is the philosophy behind the question setting. I did the prep-guide and read the Standards of Nursing as my only preparation for the exam and even my time was up too fast in the first period in the exam (I had no time to read some of the last questions...) I did pass. And... I am foreign educated nurse as well...and english is not my first language...

The key I found most important is to read the question throughly and find what it is that they are really asking. Then mark the answer that you by first sight think is the right one. And not be thinking too long one question...you might run out of time

Good luck to you!

I used the 4th edition ( still had short answer questions) and I used NCLEX preparation materials. One thing that maybe throwing you is if you run into a stumper question that you don't know the answer to. There is a tendency to hang up on that and make silly mistakes after. When you look at a particular subject. Think about the nursing process and how it works for each subject. What are the priorities.

One more piece of advice, although in todays computer age I'm not sure if its relevant.
Make sure you put the answer to the question in the right place - answer 1 in space 1, answer 2 in space 2, etc.
I know somone who failed because she skipped a question and put the answer to the next question in that space - ie put the answer to question 10 where question 9 should be. She knew what she did when go to the end of the exam and had one left over space, but it was too late to go back and figure out where she went wrong.
Also - go with your first instincts, they are often correct.

When taking the exam, its not good to memorize the answer because they might change only one word on a given situation that can also change the answer. Its better if you understand the whole situation or as what stated above the philosophy why you should do this and that. Because no matter how they srumble the whole situation, you wont be confused because you know the whole process.

When I wrote the CRNE or any other multiple choice for that matter, I made it a habit to circle, underline or rewrite key words of the question. Some are obvious but I found circling words like "Not" or "doesn't" or "wouldn't" saved me a number of times from making stupid mistakes. ie: If your patient is not improving, which of the following wouldn't you do?

suzanne4 and janfrn made some good points. Learn from them.

I took my CGFNS last March 12, and just like you some of the questions were really familiar because they're quite similar in the CGFNS Guide Book. But I took time to read through each question since they were rephrased...asked in a different way, or it was a familiar question but it was asking for something different. The CGFNS Guide did warn readers that questions found in the CGFNS Guide Book would not come out in the actual exam, so memorizing answers is not really a good idea. Maybe that's how it is with other Prep Guides too...

The next CRNE will be on October, right? Learn from your mistakes. Make good in your preparation. Good luck!

Actually, the next CRNE is June 4th. The application deadline is the April 3.