How I Passed NCLEX the First Time - If I Can You Definitely Will

Here is my story about how I passed the NCLEX RN in my first attempt, after 7 years of nursing school and no work in the last 2 years (and I am a foreign graduate from India) Nurses Announcements Archive Article

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How I Passed NCLEX the First Time - If I Can You Definitely Will

Although now I realize it was a big - big mistake, I never really went back to my nursing books after I left nursing school , and when I was faced with a situation (got married, moved to the USA) where I have to claim my competence in my field to stay in my field I was really worried :cry:. I wondered how I am going to go over everything that I learned for 4 years once again.

The whole point of my article is to give all those people who are in the situation that I was a couple of months ago, the much-needed support, encouragement, and confidence to be successful in this exam.

3 Components to My Success in NCLEX

Positive Support, Prayers, and Hard work, and here I would say the first two factors supersede the last one at least in my case.

1. Positive Support

My parents are a constant source of encouragement when I was drained of it ... But when I became overloaded with it .. To the point that stress started getting the best of me ... My husband would just balance it with calming me down saying this test is not going to change anything, anything in the way people (he and everyone else) think about me and it's okay for me to go easy on it.

2. Prayers

This was the most important thing that kept me going throughout, I cannot stress how important it was for me. I prayed to all the Gods I knew Ganesh ji, Hanuman ji, Shiv ji, Durga ma, Jesus Christ, mother Mary, Shri Ram. And I believe to this day that it was my Gods who made me pick the right answers.

3. Hard work

Paired with consistency is the last but not the least of the factors.

My opinion about NCLEX difficulty level

There is a lot of hype about NCLEX, that somehow drags down one's confidence. Although it is not an easy exam to crack, from what I have experienced, it can be done with a little extra effort.

So exactly like you are doing now, I did a lot of reading on this site about, how people passed the exam, what books they used, and watched videos of successful candidates on YouTube. I do recommend doing that because it gives you choices to pick from.

Resources and method used

Step 1 - Saunders

I purchased a Saunders NCLEX RN review book from Amazon.com but did not finish it. I completed the maternity section, gastro, endocrine, and cardiovascular from that book. At that time I wasn't sure when I was going to take the exam and I was processing my application, so I didn't do it really seriously. :nailbiting:

Step 2 - Lippincott

I had a Lippincott NCLEX q and a book that my sister passed on to me, and I want to say that it was very very helpful for me (Remember I graduated 5 years back, so my knowledge of content was very poor and , doing questions [with a scenario] and reading the rationale and writing down the key points of the answer helped me remember the content better). I used this book because I had it with me, you might want to use some other book that you find had good questions and rationales, that's perfectly fine.

Step 3 - Kaplan

I invested in Kaplan NCLEX RN review course. I really recommend this course a lot guys. If you can afford it, get it, and once you have it take it seriously. I will say buy it when you have your exam in 1.5 months time. No need to buy the live online one like I did because they do not have the lectures on content in the live session, what they do is teach you to use the decision tree by way of example questions. And there are prerecorded videos of the same, so no need to pay extra.

Additional Tips

When you use Kaplan, take 2 weeks to read through the content book, cover to cover, with concentration and if possible twice. That I believe is the only amount of content you need for this exam, trust them, there is a reason why they are so popular.

Next, for doing the questions make a time table. Make a schedule for the 1 month time left for the exam date, divide days for questions and days to listen to content video and days to revise all of the notes you will take after reading the rationale of all questions you do ( both right and wrong). And divide it proportionately (eg. Monday to Thursday 150 questions daily, Friday content lecture 2 units + 1 unit from course book revision, Saturday Sunday - revise notes taken from question rationales till date).

At this point you might think, "man, this sounds like a lot of hard work" :no:, but, because I have done it I am telling you, it isn't, initially it might feel like, but as you advance you will start recalling that you have already come across the same content formatted in a different question. And it is a much more reliable and easy method compared to running between 10 different types of books and ending up feeling not remembering anything learnt thus far.

Finally

Pay special attention to the delegation, prioritization, assessment questions, there are a lot of them on the exam. And it is very true when people say Kaplan questions are similar to NCLEX and are way harder than it actually.

Believe me, if you do it right, you will pass it for sure in the first time, with 75 questions, like I did. Having said that, I will also add that, assess yourself to find out what method suits you, and follow this only if this works for you. You will know when you do it for a few days.

DON'T FORGET TO PRAY All the best guy's :up:

I'm a BSN, RN with 5 years of experience.

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carolyn cortes

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Well this is true your three components. It really works. Also, I would definitely recommend people out there to take a Kaplan review center. They will give you all the techniques that you will be needing for you to answer questions in NCLEX wih confidence.

You are lucky that you are able to finish with a 75 questions in NCLEX. (Which is scary because usually either you pass or fail, whether you take it 75 or 265 question). Test takers are always wishing that they would stop at 75 so they could pass. Even if you are beyond that 75 item you should continue in your exam don't lose hope. Like I did, I almost panicked when I didn't stop at 75 , but then I was able to get back in track up until I finsihed the 265 question. Yes! 265! Believe me.:up:

My point is you should study hard, pray and have a positive thinking (which I don't have throughout my entire review for 6months). So yes, I also pass my first NCLEX-RN exam. I'm happy for you that you also passed.

Next step IELTS!!! í ½í¸€