Are books for excelsior necessary?

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Since I will be paying out of pocket for excelsior I am looking for the cheapest possible route. Do you have to buy the books? If not how do you learn the material? I have a local library availiable to my access and of course internet. I also have all my LPN books.

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Specializes in LTC, Clinic, Med/Surg, Ortho.

IMO books are necessary. I ordered mine from various sites and some were an edition or two older.

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Specializes in GI, Outpatient Surgery.

I think for all the exams EXCEPT LS exams you need books. For the LS exams I used Saunders NCLEX-RN book.

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Specializes in PICU, ED, Infection Control, Education, cardiology.

As a general rule, books will be needed. When I did the EC program, I did not use their books however. I used my own that I purchased. Any up-to-date RN level books will do really. I would'nt continue to use the LPN books due to the level that there are created for. I always get my texts through Textbooks.com. I have found them to be great with used books prices. I know for grad school I spend half of what I do in the campus store. I have also used Amazon and found them to be great.

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Specializes in Tele/Neuro/Trauma.

I honestly did purchase a cheaper version of all the required texts, but I really didn't use them a whole lot... the psych book for instance I never opened and the chronic illness book only a few pages were really what I needed. For the biggest part of my studying I used the NCLEX RN Saunders review. I think it depends on how you learn. The ones I would say are 100% needed are the Taylor's Fundamentals, the Smeltzer M/S text, Wongs peds and the Reproductive books. I agree w/the previous poster, alot of the materials are SIMILAR from a LPN program, however the level of care we are expected to give is a bit different and also the portions such as delegation and management are not covered.

I did not spend too much on books, got them on Ebay or Amazon and CLEPed what I could. Message me and let me know what you need. I need to get rid of stuff to help pay for my trip to NY :-)

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I got many of my books for free from the library or for a $1 fee for an interlibrary loan.

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