Cant make myself study

caliotter3 · May 21, 2010

I would start with at least a week vacation from everything nursing. Give your brain a chance to rest. Then do a mental rundown of how YOU feel about your nursing education. Did you learn a lot and retain it? Or did you just get by? People usually plan for three weeks to about three months for study. Get a calendar and plan it out for yourself. Make your appointment then get your study materials and make a plan. Then start your plan and stick to it. Find your review resources, people usually choose the Saunders Comprehensive Review, but you might like another. Doesn't matter as long as you learn the concepts. You also should get the Linda LaCharity book on prioritization and the Kaplan review book for test taking strategies. If you feel very deficienct and can afford it, you might want to schedule a live or online review to jump start yourself. Otherwise, save review courses for the possibility that you might not pass. Most people pass by studying on their own, using a review book. Once you get started preparing, it will be easier to keep the momentum going. Do as many questions as possible and study the rationales. That is about it.

dura_mater · May 21, 2010

I had a hard time "forcing" myself to study for NCLEX as well. School was long and hard, and once I graduated, I didn't feel like studying for boards.

What helped me was that I signed up to take the Kaplan live review, this kinda forced me into getting into the study mode. It was 2 weeks long, 4 days per week. I loved it, I feel that Kaplan helped me tremendously, not only to get into that study mode, but also with the amount of NCLEX style questions that I was able to access through the program.

For me, the way I studied was by doing NCLEX type questions every day for about 1 month before boards. Like I mentioned, I did Kaplan, and all the Qbank and Qtrainer questions that were available. I would read rationales for all the questions I did, and the only time I got out my text books (or the Kaplan RN course book) was if I was totally unfamiliar with a topic. I also did questions from Saunders & Mosby's NCLEX review books. I would do ~50-75 questions per day for the 1st week, then ~75-125 per day for the second week, etc, gradually building up until I was doing ~200-300 questions per day for the 2 weeks before the test.

For me, doing the questions was an interesting and easier way to study, it was not like I had my nose buried in a text book, the way I did in school. It was also gratifying because I would get instant feedback on how I was scoring on these questions/tests, so as I did more questions, I would see my scores improve.

I can't imagine studying for boards any other way, but everyone has there own study habits and learning needs. BTW, I passed boards the first time with 75 questions.

HTH

good luck