I've posted about failing NCLEX in May. I took a few weeks off after and regrouped. I looked for some magical combination of tactics or books on here and everywhere. I didn't know what to do. I had good grades in my BSN. My Kaplan scores were above 70. I went in thinking I had it and I was wrong. I landed on Hurst, said a prayer and took a leap. A few of you asked if Hurst was helpful.. YES. Do it, you won't regret it.
With Hurst, I watched the videos (broke them up to 1 - 2 topics a day) and filled out the notes I had printed (email it to Staples and pick it up, throw it in a binder, quick and easy). Then rewatched them all. Then, I just kept flipping through the notes when I had time. I'd talk to myself as if I was explaining it to someone. I made index cards of all of the med class suffix's and major contraindications. Anything I didn't get I YouTube'd to actually see the procedure or what they were talking about (I'm visual). I didn't do all of the Hurst questions. I actually only did the 1 test. I knew if I had a low score it would ruin me mentally so I said when I got a high one I'd stop and I did. After that, I just flipped through Saunders and did random questions in the book (so I didn't get scored but to learn from rationales). I'm not suggesting this, just explaining how I made it work for me.
For me, I figured I did well on Kaplan (1000's of questions) before and that meant nothing ultimately. There's nothing that is apples to apples with NCLEX. Nothing starts you out at one level and moves you accordingly. So why put all your eggs in a basket based on that? And why trust a strategy based on figuring out what the question wants using trees, and tactics. I wanted to know core content like the back of my hand, and Hurst helped me regroup everything I learned into a seamless little package. If one thing was missing, I got how that affected everything else... by understanding the human body and physiology I got what wasn't right in the question because I knew it. I didn't memorize attributes, I knew why BP was high and how that affected everything else. I left the test feeling like a ninja.
So my advice... don't listen to anyone :) Go with your gut. If you feel unprepared or worried with what you're doing then do Hurst. I never got how doing tons of questions would prepare me, I wish I would have followed that instinct from day one. I also used that mnemonic document on here, had a great summary of positioning etc.
