St. Peter's University Hospital Internship

Nurses New Nurse

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Hello fellow nurses,

I moved to NJ after getting my BSN and passing the NCLEX. As most people know, the job market is tough. St. Peters University Hospital had an open house for New Grad RN's and they offered me an internship. The internship is unpaid, and they may or may not offer me a job at the end of the 6-8weeks. The nursing recruiter said that the hospital has a two part med math exam. Part one is med math and part two is pharmacology. I have no idea how many questions there are but I do know that I have to score at least and 85 on each part. I am trying to keep in mind that I am only a new grad and they can't expect me to be a walking drug guide, but my anxiety is getting the best of me. Has anybody had a New Grad Internship here that could shed some light on the pharmacology part of this exam?

Sincerely,

a very anxious new grad

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I also was offered the internship and am pretty nervous about the test too.

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I hope your studying is going alright. I don't feel like it's possible to know all of these drugs so early in my career. I tried to focus on the drugs that are pretty common and skip drugs I haven't heard of, can't pronounce, or never gave a patient. Hopefully they stick to ACE inhibitors, BB, ARBs etc instead of asking about drugs like hydrazine and Clonidine. I'm trying to understand the drugs instead of memorize them. I hope the questions are straightforward enough that if I understand the drugs, I can pick the one the makes the most sense.

I must admit, an unpaid internship and the possibility of not getting offered a per diem job at the end of it isn't much of an incentive to study like crazy.

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To be honest I have not really been killing myself trying to study for it. I have had a lot of other things going on the past couple of weeks so I figured I would really try to focus and study most of next week (that's when my test it). I'm really just hoping they just ask questions about pretty common drugs. They didn't really give us that much information about what would be on it. It does take some of the stress out of it knowing you can take it again if you don't get the 85. I was kinda curious, do you know when we would actually start the internship?

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I take mine on the 15th and the nursing recruiter gave me a start date of Nov 3rd.

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Well good luck, I'm sure it will be easier then we expect !

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I imagine it will be. What can be worse than the NCLEX? lol. Good luck to you as well!

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Hi Abrilliant12 this is going to sound random... But I think my friend and I met you at the open house on Sept 15th! Did you move down to NJ from Maine recently? If not im sorry lol but I was offered the internship as well! I was wondering how you did? I passed the calculations part but have to retake the pharm section on the 20th. It was so much harder than I expected! How did your test go?? I'm crossing my fingers for you!

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Yes we did meat at the open house. I passed the drug calculations but not the pharmacology part. It was harder than I expected. I'm not exactly sure how to go about studying for it again or how long I should wait before retaking it. I don't think that the categories they told us to study really matched what was on the exam. I'm not sure if this is normal for NJ but I have never been asked to know exact dosages for medications :( I've always been told to look it up. I guess I need to find a new approach for studying. How do you plan on tackeling pharmacology the 2nd time around?

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Ahh yeah then we are in the same boat. Don't get discouraged it was so hard and definitely not what I was expecting either! Like you said there was a lot of stuff on there that wasn't mentioned in the "study guide." We weren't really given any help on how to study. I have a friend who was hired at a medical center in south jersey, but she was allowed to use a book! It not so fair because I feel like meds are something you master after working for some time, but eh I guess we just have to get over this one. I was told that the retake exam is very similar in that it is basically the same format, but different questions. Some of the same really important drugs will be on there. I'm going to study all the drugs that were on the first test and look them up more in depth. Then I will look up the most common prescribed drugs and learn as much as I can about them. When is your retake date?

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I was told I had to call and schedule a retake date, which I haven't done yet. I'm going to call Monday. I'm still racking my brain on how to memorize the different dosages, especially when the dosage depends on the Dx and the route of administration. If I can get through that part I THINK the rest won't be too bad.

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I'm retaking mine tomorrow I hope it goes well!

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