Brookhaven Nursing Program 2012 Class

U.S.A. Texas

Published

Hello everyone, I would like to know who's applying to Brookhaven this fall for their Spring 2012 class, if so how many with how many points? I will be taking my last support course this summer, which is my elective (PHIL 1304). I am so excited, upon completion of this course I will have 32.39 points. I can't tell how nervous I am, I hope this is enough. Any advice from previous or current nursing program is welcomed.

Specializes in Cardiac Critical Care.

Congrats! AC hasn't sent out any info re: scrubs or shoes yet, the info I've got on that is from previous students. Not sure if you know, but we've got a facebook group going for the Spring class :) can't wait to meet you!

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I am already on the facebook page too. I guess I'll just hang tight and wait.

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A lot of information can be found on here about how the process has gone, and advice from other students, if you search Brookhaven on Allnurses.

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Congratulations to all of you who were accepted for spring! I am finishing my first semester next week and I wanted to offer to answer any questions y'all might have that haven't already been answered! I spent the whole summer getting so nervous and excited and wondering what it would be like and the current students helped a lot by letting us know what to expect.

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Specializes in Cardiac Critical Care.

Thanks Ashlee!

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Thank you for the offer Ashlee, I have a few :)

Can we pick anywhere to do our volunteer hours, or is there a list of approved sites to do them?

What do you suggest we study to prepare for classes in January?

What books from your package, if any, could we do without getting the first semester?

I know it's a lot of questions, but I really appreciate any advice/help/answers you can give :)

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Escape,

We were able to pick where we wanted to do our volunteer hours but it had to be approved by your clinical instructor. Most instructors didn't want you volunteering at the Race for the Cure or something like that, but wanted you to be getting some kind of experience that was relevant to nursing. We log our hours through sweatmonkey.com and there were several places that were already on there to choose from. If you wanted to choose an organization that wasn't part of sweat monkey you just had to ask them to join the site.

I think a lot of the people in my class ended up doing them at Vitas, a hospice inpatient unit (where I did mine), or a clinic in Dallas called Metrocrest. I initially wanted to do mine at a hospital and get my foot in the door, but I found that a lot of the hospitals I looked at required a lot of your time and couldn't guarantee you'd be following a nurse. I really liked Vitas because the nurses there really need your help so they basically let you do most of what you can do in clinicals.

(A few of my friends have since found really good volunteer jobs at hospitals though, you just have to take to the volunteer coordinator and see if they will be willing to work with you and give you an assignment when you can get relevant experience.)

As far as getting started on studying, I would suggest you start reading for fundamentals! There are like 15 chapters required for the first test (which was our third week of school) and we were all wishing we had gotten the syllabus/lecture schedule months before we actually did to start all that reading. If y'all haven't gotten your lecture schedule from AC yet I can tell you what chapters we needed for the first few weeks.

I think a few people also took the time to go over pharm and patho, which might be helpful (especially patho). I also started doing NCLEX questions over the summer, even though I didn't know most of the answers you learn from the rationales.

I didn't buy the book package because my best friend was already in nursing school at UTA so I had quite a few of the books already. I'll tell you what I used though...

The fundamentals book of course

The med surg book- we only needed to read one section out of it for lecture but I found it really helpful for doing patho statements for clinical

Mosby's diagnostic tests book- for clinical you have to determine why your patient's lab values may be off, and this was much faster/easier than googling everything

The strategies book we used during preclinical but honestly you might be smart to split it with a friend and make copies of the few handouts we actually need to turn in.

The care planning book we did use but I've been told there are much better care planning books out there. I rented mine so I plan on returning it and trying another one for next semester.

I bought quite a few different NCLEX books/apps which I think helped me prepare for the tests more than just reading the chapters of the fundamentals book.

You do need a drug book but it doesn't have to be the one that comes in the package.

The mosby's video skills I stopped watching a few weeks in. They are helpful in that you go to lab sorta knowing what you're going to be learning, but I wouldn't recommend using them to study for checkoff because the instructors will show you how to perform the skills for checkoff and sometimes it's different than the videos. Definitely get them though, there's a quiz in skills lab towards the end based solely on the video and at that point in the class we had all stopped watching them and were surprised by this quiz haha.

I didn't use the drug calculations book, the patho book, Mosby's dictionary, or the mental health book at all (but you definitely need it for second semester). I looked in the pharm book once. I also didn't have the physical examination and health assessment book but I won't say don't buy it because it could have been helpful? (If that makes sense?)

We didn't have the Winningham critical thinking cases on our list but it sounds helpful, the hardest part of the first semester I think is learning how to "critically think" through the test questions.

That was ridiculously long sorry!

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Specializes in Cardiac Critical Care.

Thanks Ashlee! I don't think our package had a drug book in it... someone on here recommended Delmar's Drug Book so I got the 2012 version of that one. That is a good tip about getting started for Foundations, but AC hasn't officially told us what book we'll need for that class yet! I almost went ahead and got the Kozier book y'all have been using, but I'd hate for them to be changing books, I know they love to keep everyone on their toes like that! :)

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Oh that stinks they haven't let y'all know what fundamentals book you'll be using yet! I imagine it would be the same because our edition just came out, unless they were to switch publishers...

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Specializes in Cardiac Critical Care.

Yeah, you're probably right! When I looked up the book y'all are using, I saw one edition has MyNursingLab (or something like that) and one doesn't... do y'all use that feature or am I ok getting just the book?

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We don't use that feature so I think you'd be ok just getting the book. The online resources we use are from evolve/elsevier and go with the Potter & Perry foundations book, but they are optional.

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That is great information!!! I just signed up on Sweatmonkey, I might have some extra time on my hands very soon so maybe I could get a head start on it :)

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