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Nursing Students LPN/LVN Students

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Ok, I have been trying to get into LPN school and finally got in, passed my first Quarter with an A average. Get to Med-Surg and bomb. Can some one tell me how to study for Med-Surg? I have to sit out for 5 months and start back where I left off. Any advice, please???

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Ok, I have been trying to get into LPN school and finally got in, passed my first Quarter with an A average. Get to Med-Surg and bomb. Can some one tell me how to study for Med-Surg? I have to sit out for 5 months and start back where I left off. Any advice, please???

My classes used powerpoints during class, and thats what we went over. A lot of people thought that if they sutdy off of those they would be ok. Read your book, read the little boxes in the chapters, read it over and over again. Med surg wasnt my best subject, if you dont understand a chapter get a tutor. If you have a few months to study do it, get ahead and make sure you understand everything.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

use my critical thinking flow sheet for nursing students to study the individual medical diseases and conditions. with diseases and conditions (and this will hold true for pediatrics, psych and ob as well) you must know what the normal anatomy and physiology is, then what goes wrong and how it goes wrong to produce the disease condition. the doctors then aim their treatments at the symptoms that are produced. surgery is a treatment. sometimes they are actually able to cure a condition or disease, but not always. nurses assist the doctors in carrying out these treatments (including the surgery). nurses also perform some treatments that are independent and within the scope of our license to practice as nurses--these treatments are also aimed at the symptoms that are produced by the disease or condition. nursing will take the disease symptoms and use them to produce nursing diagnoses. and, as you probably discovered, we do a whole bunch of stuff with nursing diagnoses.

surgical patients primarily have to be monitored very carefully for the side effects of anesthesia which is primarily why they stay in the hospital:

  • breathing problems (atelectasis, hypoxia, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism)
  • hypotension (shock, hemorrhage)
  • thrombophlebitis in the lower extremity
  • elevated or depressed temperature
  • any number of problems with the incision/wound (dehiscence, evisceration, infection)
  • fluid and electrolyte imbalances
  • urinary retention
  • constipation
  • surgical pain
  • nausea/vomiting (paralytic ileus)

then, the surgical work that was done on them by the doctor needs to be cared for. this website contains information about most of the major operations: encyclopedia of surgery http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/index.html

i also suggest you learn about the nursing process which will point the way to critical thinking and help you solve problems in nursing. it will be on your nclex exam.

this thread contains websites that will be helpful in finding information about medical diseases, pathophysiology (the merck manual and emedicine), ob information (when you get to ob), pediatrics (when you get to peds): https://allnurses.com/nursing-student-assistance/medical-disease-information-258109.html - medical disease information/treatment/procedures/test reference websites

good luck!

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