Failed MedSurg

Grateful.Mom · Jul 11, 2014

Practice questions, questions, and more questions. Get the Med Surge Success book ( find it here http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_12?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=med%20surge%20success&sprefix=med+surge+su%2Caps%2C269 ) an NCLEX review book, ATI App for your phone, and any other practice questions you can get your hands on. Do 100+ each day. Go over every question you miss on every exam until you understand why you got it wrong. Now take a deep breath, relax, and know that it's not the end of the world, though it may feel like it! You can do this!

Balto · Jul 11, 2014

Get a Saunders NCLEX book & practice many, many questions. They offer additional questions on their website.

its_meee · Jul 11, 2014

Med Surg II was my most difficult class so far. I am usually an A/B student, but found myself with a C- toward the middle of the semester. That is not a passing grade and I was terrified that I would fail the class. I only had one exam left to add to my points total so I had to do well on it to pass the class. I studied NCLEX type questions that covered the content, studied class notes, listened to class lectures that I had recorded, and made sure to really study the topics that I was struggling with. I ended up getting a B on the final which allowed me to pass the class. I also did all the textbook questions at the end of each chapter and used the textbook website that is located on the inside front cover of my book...there were a lot of sample tests and quizzes that allowed me to better prepare. Good luck to you in the future :)

laKrugRN · Jul 11, 2014

I actually used Saunders NCLEX book for my whole senior year of nursing. This helped a TON for Med/Surg. It broke it down and made it easier to grasp. Plus the questions and golden and help you prep for the actual NCLEX. Good luck! MedSurg is a toughy, but you will prevail!!

macksta233 · Jul 12, 2014

thanks all! I will definitely try it! I passed med surg the second time with ALMOST a B (.1 away). I still have complex to take though so it will be a challenge!

akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P · Jul 12, 2014

One of the things that I would very much suggest that you do when taking an exam is to slow down, breathe, read the question, answer the question in your own mind, then read all of the answers. Once you have done that, compare the answers that you read with the answer that you came up with in your own mind. If there is a match between what you were thinking the answer should be and what you see as a listed answer, chances are you're thinking along the same track that the test writer wanted you to think about. If they are different, then you need to reread the question because somewhere in there, you must've missed something.

In nursing school, a lot of exams are written with the basic format of the NCLEX – RN in mind. In other words, they mimic the structure of the NCLEX questions that you will see on the exam. Even though I have not been through your program, I would imagine that most questions will be written in such a way that you can figure out what the question is asking for and from your studies, you should know which answer is the most correct. There are lots of study guides out there that will help you determine which one is the most correct.

As far as getting through school itself, nursing school is kind of different in that each semester kind of builds upon the previous semesters but it's also in a modular format so the pieces won't necessarily fit together until you reach nearly the end of the program. Typically it is towards the end of the program that you have that "ah–ha" moment and that is when the pieces typically start to fit together and make sense. In my case, I did not have that "Eureka" moment during school because I had already had that moment, so to speak, in a previous career in healthcare. For me, one of the things that made nursing school very different from the typical student experience is that I was primarily having to learn to think a different way while adding to my existing body of knowledge. In short, the pieces already fit, I just had to learn a different way to look at them.

Another thing that you need to do in order to get through school is to learn how you study most efficiently. I do things a certain way because that's how my brain tends to absorb information quickly and other people may not learn the same way that I do. Therefore, I don't suggest people do what I do when it comes to studying. However what most of my classmates did was they would read the Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) and start reading the chapters that they were supposed to read. Some of them would instead read the chapter summaries, go over the PowerPoint presentations, and then seek out specific information within the chapters that was in the SLO's but not necessarily in the PowerPoint presentations. Some of my classmates would make flashcards from the SLO's, some of them would just go over the PowerPoint presentations in depth, most would take notes while in class and probably about a 3rd of them recorded the lectures and played them back.

Remember most people learn in one of 3 ways primarily: visual, auditory, tactile. In short that can be summed up as see it, hear it, do it.some people, I would imagine most people, do respond favorably to having all 3 methods of instruction used, and good instructors will use all 3 methods at the same time. Figure out which way you learn best, and then second-best, and try to combine them. Once you feel that you have a basic grasp of the material, try to teach it to someone else. That means that if you have a pet fish, your fish will probably be the best educated nurse fish around.

Nursing school is hard, you don't have to make it harder on yourself than it is already. I wish you all the best, good luck!

Oh, and don't panic!