Discouraged

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Hi everyone. I just finished my second week of nursing school. At this point I feel pretty discouraged. I got a 55% on a graded homework (online test on a chapter we read) and a 70% on a quiz in Pharm so far. They are throwing all the "critical thinking" questions at us, and we haven't even been told or taught how to do these questions or think through them. I am really scared this is going to be a problem for me. I am really good at memorizing and then spitting it back out or recognizing an answer. Did anyone else have this same problem? Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. I really don't know what to do. I am freaking out right now. I don't want to fail out. Thanks!!!

Megan

PS: They also haven't told us how to study, etc. So we all really have no idea what to do.

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They are throwing all the "critical thinking" questions at us, and we haven't even been told or taught how to do these questions or think through them. I am really scared this is going to be a problem for me. I am really good at memorizing and then spitting it back out or recognizing an answer.

My suggestion is in most book at the end of the chapter or even throughout the chapters there are critical thinking questions practice those as much as you possibly can and get an understanding of them. Don't be discouraged just think about if you have a patient in a critical condition you have to think on your feet

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Nursing school is 99% critical thinking. Nobody is going to tell you how to study or how to learn critically.

I am in my second semester of nursing school, and failed the first med surg test and first pediatrics test. I have never failed a test before, ever! sheesh.

Don't let the #*&@!%'s get you down, you will get the hang of it, and will start to look at the test questions differently as you go along. You will get it! and you will pass!

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

see the information on these two sticky threads:

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Nursing school is 99% critical thinking. Nobody is going to tell you how to study or how to learn critically.

Actually the school that I belong to this was one of the skills that was taught to us in our first semester. We were taught to critcally think according to Maslow's Heirarcy of needs. Throwing critical thinking questions at a new nursing student and testing them on it is just cruel. Critical thinking is a clinical skill and it should be a part of the cirriculum.

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I just made it to my third semester. I know that in my school they give us unit objectives, or outlines of the materials covered for that wxam. Take those and answer them in detail, plus what also helped me was going to the college library and looking through all the RN-NCLEX books for test questions pertaining to the material we were covering and getting a sense of how their questions were going to be writted. Not only will it help you for your tests in school, but it will also help you get a head start on preparing you for the NCLEX.

Doing this has gotten me as far as I have.....Try it....Let me know if this helps.

dchris RN SN

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Don't get discouraged! You're going to pass and this will all be behind you soon :)

Now, what helps most students is if they read the chapters SLOWLY and thoroughly, making certain to understand every sentence before you move ahead. While you're doing this, highlight. Highlight anything that isn't common knowledge and something that sounds like a good test question. Once you complete the chapter make sure to take the end-of-the-chapter quizzes. When you are doing these questions, make sure you understand why the correct answer is correct, BUT ALSO make sure you know why the wrong answers are wrong. It's also very helpful to buy an NCLEX review book and do the questions in there that are related to whatever it is you're studying (i.e., the GI system, cardiovascular complications, whatever). Make sure you're going back and skimming over your highlighted notes often while you're taking the quzzes. Pretty soon the information begins to sink it, but most importantly, you retain it.

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Specializes in Psych.

If you have the NCLEX 4000 software, it has a bunch of good fundamentals questions. So do the 3500 or 3000 versions.

We also used this text site for sample questions.

http://prenhall.com/kozier/

Our instructors told us that we wouldn't really need it until later in the program, but I did all the fundamentals questions. I got a 94 on my first exam because I understood how to work with those strangely worded questions.

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Specializes in Ortho, Neuro, Detox, Tele.

Honestly, once I started doing NCLEX questions related to whatever we were studying...it seemed like I got better at each module. A lot of that is being able to eliminate answers and then going "well, which of these two is better?"...also, a good NCLEX review book has rationle for EVERY answer, right or wrong, and it helps you understand why you shouldn't pick a certain answer. I recommend anything by saunders.

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Focus on what the disease is going to do to the patient. Most questions are geared to how you are going to deal with the patient and what you are going to do to help them. Know the patho behind the disease but don't focus too much it because the questions will be more indepth than that. Hang in there it gets better.

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For my essentials of professional nursing practice class one of the three books we are using is

Rubenfeld, M. G., Scheffer, B. (2010) Critical Thinking TACTICS for Nurses: Achieving the IOM Competencies ISBN: 9780763765842

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