Aussie trained RN - passed first time!

25 Posts

I put off doing the NCLEX for FIVE YEARS!!!! I was scared to death of it, and thought I wasn't smart enough. So I haven't worked as a nurse since moving here in January 2001 (though I did work as a surgical technologist in MA for a few years in that time).

I slayed that NCLEX dragon.......I took it Thursday morning, got 75 questions, and found out yesterday I passed. :)

Just wanted to let all you foreign trained grads out there it can be done!!!!!! I graduated in 1994, and I passed first go!!!

I did a LOT of hard work, and pretty much did nothing but study for the last 6 weeks. I enrolled in Hurst Review (awesome), did many, many Saunders questions, and also a whole bunch of Kaplan questions I found online just before I tested. I was also lucky enough to have a friend who is a pharmacology prof, who emailed me the course notes for an entire semester of pharmacology. I made myself do AT LEAST 100-200 practice questions per day. It was pretty horrid for my family, and we had a laundry pile the size of Mount Everest, but I figured that if I put in the hard work first time, it would pay off in me not having to study more later.....and it did pay off. :-) Most importantly, I went in there with the attitude that it was NOT a huge deal if I failed first go. It did not make me a bad person, bad nurse, or anything else. It's JUST ONE TEST. In the grand scheme, no biggie. I figured if I DID fail, at least that huge unknown factor about the whole thing would be gone, which is half the battle. I had Marlene Hurst's voice in my head reciting, "I promise that I will not get upset if I don't know something on the test."

Y'all (both US and foreign trained).......if I can do this, SO CAN YOU! SLAY THAT NCLEX DRAGON!!! (It really is a pussycat, and not the ferocious dragon I had imagined. I think we scare ourselves half to death about it. :-) )