Advice on Strategies to Pass Med Surg from Students Who've Been There Before

[bob bib]

Hello everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone could give me advice on how to pass med surg because I am at a lost for ideas. I am generally a great student and had a 3.8 GPA in my first semester of nursing school, but Med Surg has been a disaster and I just don't know what else to try.

I took it once and came up short by three points and had to repeat it this past semester. On my second attempt, I came up short by 1.7 points even though I completely changed my study methods on advice from fellow students. I bought review books, did tons of practice questions and created review sheets and concept maps for myself. I do exceedingly well on practice questions, and feel confident on exams, but always end up coming short by a couple of questions. In my school a passing grade on a nursing exam is 75 and I keep averaging 70-72. I do fantastic in clinical and get outstanding feedback but when it comes to the exams, I am bewildered by what I'm doing wrong. I am really desperate and want to know if there is anything else I can try. I changed my availability at work to just two days a week and found family members willing to help me with child care, so I was able to invest all of my free time into studying, so it's clear that something in my study method is not working.

I know some advice to try and take the course with another instructor, unfortunately that's not an option with me as there is only a single instructor teaching all the med surg sections. Like most nursing programs, her approach is as she says to facilitate our learning, not actually teach us, and although I have never missed the lectures, I don't feel I get a lot out of them as it's mostly the instructor reading through the textbook slides. I do not have the option of changing schools unfortunately and I really want to figure out what I'm doing wrong. This coming attempt is my third and last per school policy.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I should do? What did you guys use to pass Med Surg?

Thanks.

[bob bib]

Thank you so much everyone for your helpful suggestions and ideas. I think you're right, that I spent too much studying everything in the book and all the review materials I got.

I don't know if this strategy makes sense, but let me know what you think. Since I got a feeling for how the exam are made, this time around, I think I will focus on studying for every exam from first lecture for that exam material. Instead of reading everything, just memorize and focus on the important diseases that I know we get tested on (basically the ADPIE, signs/symptoms/meds/interventions). I think I might use my class time to study that independently during lecture because unfortunately, the three hour long lectures, like I said, are mostly the instructor reading through the book powerpoints. The instructor doesn't make any changes to them, it's the same ones I can pull up from my book's student account.

Has anyone tried this strategy, or am I setting myself up for failure again? It's my last shot, so this is the only thing I haven't tried. I think if I can just hard memorize every ADPIE step for every disease condition that we are studying, I should be fine on the exam. The textbook readings we are assigned are extremely materials heavy, but as far as I can remember from the exams, it's always something from the ADPIE process. I focused too much on practice questions I think, so when I got on the exams and the questions were nothing like practice, I guess that messed me up. I was only a few points short in passing each class...

Thank you again. I just reregistered for the same two classes. It's going to be with the same instructor since we don't have a choice, but I think I should have a chance with this strategy. It's my LAST shot, if I fail out this time, I can get dismissed from the program. If it sounds like a bad idea, please let me know!!!

Thank you all again, you guy are amazing.

[NICU_Nurse_Casti, BSN, RN]

Remember that nursing is more than just memorizing information. You have to be able to critically think and prioritize. Really pay close attention to what the questions is really asking. Like “what should the nurse do first?” or “What is the best course of action?” Understanding the condition/disease, expected s/s, and typical interventions are the foundation. You have to be able to apply that knowledge to various situations and determine the appropriate action. My instructor has been teaching us to think this way: What’s wrong? What interventions can we do to fix what’s wrong? What problem is the priority (ABC’s, Maslow’s)? Fix that problem first.

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

Your welcome!!! ? i know you can do this. Im sorry i don't fully understand your new study method. Can you please elaborate on what you are going to do differently ? ?

[bob bib]

On 12/29/2019 at 6:30 PM, E-commerce said:

Your welcome!!! ? i know you can do this. Im sorry i don't fully understand your new study method. Can you please elaborate on what you are going to do differently ? ?

Basically, my lecture is 3 hours long which is almost entirely spent by the instructor reading through the textbook powerpoint slides. Not very productive. I would like to use the in class time to study the material by bringing in my laptop and adding any notes to the powerpoint on things that aren't mentioned in the powerpoint but that the instructor might add and spending the rest of the time independently studying the concepts on my laptop.

The instructor does not take questions during lecture, so like I said, it's very unproductive use of time (only one instructor is teaching med surg, we don't have another option). This will net me at least another 3 hours a week of pure study time. I used to come to lecture and just take down notes from the powerpoints while the instructor was going over them, but I don't feel like that was a very productive use of time. Attendance is required, but not part of the grade (2+ unexcused absences = fail, 4+ unexcused lateness = fail)

I will also follow through with the advice provided to me so generously here. I focused too much on everything in the book, like you guys said, while a lot of that stuff appears to be "fluff". We don't get a specific reading section, the instructor just assigns 2-3 entire chapters to read for each lecture.

What I feel like I'm missing out on is that I have to do more to adjust my learning method. I've always focused on learning from lecture, but it seems this class (and nursing in general) is more about independent, on your own, learning, which is what I plan on doing.

Also like someone else mentioned, I may have gone overboard on practice questions instead of getting the small details that come up on exams. My school makes up their questions from scratch and I've heard that they are harder than actual NCLEX question, because the school has a very high NCLEX pass rate on first attempt and they want to keep it that way. That's probably why the test bank questions from the textbook didn't help much in studying. Again, practice questions was always one of my main methods of studying for exams, that's how I passed Organic Chem with an A...clearly, I need to set that strategy aside.

Thank you again everyone. I am going to try to use January to refresh myself on all the materials so that I can hopefully pass this class and not get kicked out of the program.

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

7 hours ago, bob bib said:

Basically, my lecture is 3 hours long which is almost entirely spent by the instructor reading through the textbook powerpoint slides. Not very productive. I would like to use the in class time to study the material by bringing in my laptop and adding any notes to the powerpoint on things that aren't mentioned in the powerpoint but that the instructor might add and spending the rest of the time independently studying the concepts on my laptop.

The instructor does not take questions during lecture, so like I said, it's very unproductive use of time (only one instructor is teaching med surg, we don't have another option). This will net me at least another 3 hours a week of pure study time. I used to come to lecture and just take down notes from the powerpoints while the instructor was going over them, but I don't feel like that was a very productive use of time. Attendance is required, but not part of the grade (2+ unexcused absences = fail, 4+ unexcused lateness = fail)

I will also follow through with the advice provided to me so generously here. I focused too much on everything in the book, like you guys said, while a lot of that stuff appears to be "fluff". We don't get a specific reading section, the instructor just assigns 2-3 entire chapters to read for each lecture.

What I feel like I'm missing out on is that I have to do more to adjust my learning method. I've always focused on learning from lecture, but it seems this class (and nursing in general) is more about independent, on your own, learning, which is what I plan on doing.

Also like someone else mentioned, I may have gone overboard on practice questions instead of getting the small details that come up on exams. My school makes up their questions from scratch and I've heard that they are harder than actual NCLEX question, because the school has a very high NCLEX pass rate on first attempt and they want to keep it that way. That's probably why the test bank questions from the textbook didn't help much in studying. Again, practice questions was always one of my main methods of studying for exams, that's how I passed Organic Chem with an A...clearly, I need to set that strategy aside.

Thank you again everyone. I am going to try to use January to refresh myself on all the materials so that I can hopefully pass this class and not get kicked out of the program.

Great job. Active recall is wayyy more effective. What medical surgical book are you using? Does your medical surgical book have clinical companion version?

[bob bib]

11 hours ago, E-commerce said:

Great job. Active recall is wayyy more effective. What medical surgical book are you using? Does your medical surgical book have clinical companion version?

We are using Brunner and Suddarth textbook of Medical Surgical nursing. I purchased the study guide for it as well. I am not sure what a clinical companion is?

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

Great. Google Brunner and Suddarth clinical companion and see if there is a version. Clinical companions are "cliff notes" for large medical surgical books. It takes out all fluff and focuses only on the important "need to know" information that your professor may test you on since you do not get specific reading material

[bob bib]

Oh thanks, yeah, that's pretty much what the study guide does.

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

Awesome! Let us know how everything goes ? you got this!

[bob bib]

2 hours ago, E-commerce said:

Awesome! Let us know how everything goes ? you got this!

Thank you so much for your kind words. I certainly hope so, it's my last chance to stay in the program.

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

3 minutes ago, bob bib said:

Thank you so much for your kind words. I certainly hope so, it's my last chance to stay in the program.

Your very welcome! ?