Hi. I'm in my first term of Nursing. I'm taking Fundamentals, the lab, and intro to professional nursing in which I'd like to drop to focus on fundamentals.
I just took my first quiz for fundamentals and got a whooping 66%. Granted, I didn't read the 2nd half of the chapters assigned because I just didn't have time to read them.
Week one (Aug 27th) consisted of 4 chapters, and week two (no school, labor day sept 3rd obviously still assigned) 3 chapters....and boy are they long. I had about less than 11 days to study them. I was quizzed on all on sept 10th.
We need to read the material BEFORE being lectured on it, just to be quizzed on it. My prof's lectures are useless anyway and she doesn't release the powerpoints. She never finishes all the powerpoints and is extremely fast paced. I feel screwed. The midterm is 2 weeks away and there will be 13 chapters required to know.
I've come to realize that this Potter & Perry (8th ed.) book elaborates on a bunch of non-sense in depth, mixed with the main Nursing concepts, principles, etc. required to know. It seems more like a reference text rather then a text for a course. My friend who is an RN already can't stress enough how important the P&P book is to pass fundamentals. The problem is that it's very, very time consuming, since it explains too much in depth. Heck, assessment is nearly 80 pages! Plus 2 other chapters I must read within 6 days. Sure I can manage to read them before my weekly quiz; that's reading it once, taking no notes, not repeating/memorizing important content.
Not to mention the stuff for the other classes. And ATI stuff due, takes away my study time! The ATI isn't even coherent with the fundamentals lecture either. It also doesn't explain rationales....blah.
My learning style is reading, highlighting, understanding, and repetition, note taking is okay, but I can't really differentiate between that and just reading the important stuff in the book. I know some of you will say...oh but writing it down will help you remember. It doesn't. I'm a pure reading, understanding, repetitive kind of person when it comes to studying.
Anyway, the quiz was definitely a wake up call. Since the P&P chapters take SO long to read, I was finding myself skimming and skimming, doing the practice questions in the end. This isn't the way I study. But really, my study style can't adapt to this book considering how accelerated the term is (9 weeks) and the amount of [long] chapters assigned per week (it'll be 3-4 from now on, the first quiz was 7 because of labor day..it was still overwhelming). There will be a quiz every week with an exception of the midterm and final days. So imagine reading 3-4 long chapters weekly plus familiarizing/studying more the chapters of the previous weeks, and having to worry about skills lab practices/tests, that other class, and ATI stuff? Ouch.
My plan is to study off these books and do the Evolve NCLEX questions. Completely eliminating the P&P. My gut is telling me that I won't pass just depending on the P&P book.
Has anyone studied using alternative resources for fundamentals, completely eliminating the P&P book and passed?
