Preparing for RN school

NICU_Nurse, BSN, RN · Jun 2, 2002

I would encourage anyone to begin learning medical terminology and pharmacology formulas if they had a chance before school actually started. A simple terminology handbook is all that is needed to begin familiarizing yourself with new words- and there are a LOT of them!! There is a great math book called Med-Math, sort of a workbook, that teaches you how to convert different things and how to calculate drug problems, etc. The book is great, and both of these things are going to help form the basis of your nursing education. I think it is better to begin early, because that is just less you will have to worry about once you're in school. If you have a summer off, get two books and just start reading them, maybe working out the math problems. In our first semester, we had to take a competency test to pass to the next level (the test was in math calculations) and I can't tell you how many people freaked out over that one, trying to cram all of this new information in. As for vocabulary, you will be building and building upon this as you progress in school, and it could only help you to know some of it early on. Good luck!