Failed first pathophysiology exam

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Feeling very discouraged from ever getting to be a nurse.

Has anyone ever failed their first pathophysiology exam?

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It's okay! I BOMBED my first anatomy exam. Ended up getting an A in the class. I've been a nurse for 5 years now. Dont let one test discourage you. Evaluate your weaknesses. Study a different way. Ask your professor for pointers. You'll do better next time

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So sorry to hear that! Get "back up on the horse," as they say and keep plugging along. We have all experienced setbacks in our education; what matters is how you respond and keep moving forward. Best wishes!

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I failed my first nursing exam that covered bed making, transferring, and things of that nature. Oops!

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I guarantee you that everyone has failed a test at least once in their life. It happens. Try to move on and ACE your next test!

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Nursing school is a beast. You're going to flunk an exam or two, it's okay. The important thing for you to do now is accept it and learn from it. What happened with this exam? Were you unprepared for the material on the exam? Did you feel that you had a good handle on the material, but didn't know how to answer the questions (this can definitely happen with nursing-style questions). What do you need to do the next time around to make sure you are able to attain a better score?

My advice would be to go and speak with your instructor and go over your test. Find out if there were specific areas where you have a knowledge gap, or if your study skills need to be adjusted for this class, or if you need some test-taking skills tailored for nursing-style questions.

Don't let one crap grade on an exam deter you. Make a course correction and keep on swimming towards your goal. You will get there.

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Heck yeah! I've had some exams in nursing school that I have bombed (One off them being in patho which I got a 63%-yikes!), however, I have never let this stop me as this just made me change of my study habits accordingly, or just read the book and do 10x more practice questions then what I was already doing.

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Nursing school is a beast. You're going to flunk an exam or two, it's okay. The important thing for you to do now is accept it and learn from it. What happened with this exam? Were you unprepared for the material on the exam? Did you feel that you had a good handle on the material, but didn't know how to answer the questions (this can definitely happen with nursing-style questions). What do you need to do the next time around to make sure you are able to attain a better score?

My advice would be to go and speak with your instructor and go over your test. Find out if there were specific areas where you have a knowledge gap, or if your study skills need to be adjusted for this class, or if you need some test-taking skills tailored for nursing-style questions.

Don't let one crap grade on an exam deter you. Make a course correction and keep on swimming towards your goal. You will get there.

I spent a lot of time relearning some of the easy stuff in the beginning of some of the chapters that either my previous biology teachers didn't go over with us in class or were stuff that I had forgotten.

I feel like I could have read a lot more, took breaks from my reading more often, and wrote down maybe questions about the material or what I understood or group the sections of the chapters into things that would help me understand. Take information my brain can recognize and put into chunks, such as I'll take something from my power points like the diseases we learned and out of 8, if one is Autosomal Dominant, I'll be able to remember that one is Autosomal dominant and the rest are Autosomal Recessive. I forgot that in nursing school you have to give up a social life and going out and eating out. I have no problem with any of that. I'm taking a break from my exam right now that I had yesterday. I think either tomorrow or tonight I'll work on the new stuff and going over everything.

I am curious tho, if I have power points, should those be the topics I should read in the book and not stray outside of where they are in the book or should I just read the whole ******* book? I spoke to my teacher yesterday about it and she said I could do better and that this is something they see every semester. But I don't know how I can improve. I was somewhat familiar with the material. I think if I read more into detail and maybe learned a few new things about how everything works, I think that could have helped a little as well as going over everything over and over and over. Of course, I don't know if what I do is what everyone else does...and that's how they succeed, but our class is in the morning and in the morning your brain is like half-asleep. Reading the questions on the test also kind of killed me. A lot of words were throwing me off and the answers had names that were different from what we learned and I'm like why? Why is it like this? I bet nursing is simple, the test makers just like to science **** ****. Patho is really interesting, but it can be a real career changer quick if your brain doesn't have thick skin.

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Heck yeah! I've had some exams in nursing school that I have bombed (One off them being in patho which I got a 63%-yikes!), however, I have never let this stop me as this just made me change of my study habits accordingly, or just read the book and do 10x more practice questions then what I was already doing.

That's the problem is I can't find practice questions relevant to what I'm covering. I'd hate to take a test where the questions will talk about something 2 exams from now. Quizlet isn't very reliable because it's pretty much what I described not wanting to do. I have Elsevier which I will look into more and use.

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Specializes in Psych, Peds, Education, Infection Control.

Any tests with Select All That Apply (and there are SO many) kicked my butt, unless you got partial credit for correct answers. If it was a "miss one selection, the whole question is wrong" deal, I was gonna have a bad time because my test anxiety kicked in and I overthought it. This is true in graduate school as well, I've found. Nonetheless, I've been a nurse for 14 years and managed a solid enough final GPA to get into grad school... I get it, though. It's so disheartening when you get a grade on a test that you disappoint yourself with, especially if you studied hard.

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Any tests with Select All That Apply (and there are SO many) kicked my butt, unless you got partial credit for correct answers. If it was a "miss one selection, the whole question is wrong" deal, I was gonna have a bad time because my test anxiety kicked in and I overthought it. This is true in graduate school as well, I've found. Nonetheless, I've been a nurse for 14 years and managed a solid enough final GPA to get into grad school... I get it, though. It's so disheartening when you get a grade on a test that you disappoint yourself with, especially if you studied hard.

This comment is so true. F'ing thank you! There were two select all that apply and I got one, or both, wrong because I missed one choice. I've heard from nurses who took the nclex where it was one choice answer that it's better the newer NCLEX nowadays has SATA because you can miss part of the question. That's what I was told last summer in my nutrition class.

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Do you have the study guide for the book by chance? I'm not sure which textbook you're using :(

My current college uses Porth's essentials of patho, the study guide, and prepU to go along with it and I feel like this prepared me. The study guide doesn't go into super deep detail but I feel like it helps guide my reading and understanding of some of the heavier chapters.

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