How do you seriously remember everything in nursing school?

[MaryFutureRN]

I'm on my second year in nursing school. This is my fourth semester and my 5th clinicals shift. I've taken normal OB/Pedia last semester, and this time I'm taking Pathologic OB, Pedia, and Pharmacology (and some other subjects). It's just...ugh..okay. I did my trick of memorizing and digging into pathophysiology and all those stuff. I can understand them very well, but they keep fading in my memory and I keep forgetting. There are times during clinicals where I forget to do something for the patient because I can't recall the last item on the list of nursing interventions. I'm doing better in clinicals than the my very first one. DR shifts stress me immensely, but I'm doing absolutely better (but not perfect) than the my first shift in it.

Pharmacology is stressing me out too. For some reason I feel extremely obliged to memorize the dosages and the specific side effects of each drug. I'm just too overwhelmed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving Nursing now than before, but my fear of incompetence and stupidity just impedes me.

I really wonder whether I'd be as good as my professors (who act like knowledge dispenser machines-you click and the right pops out). I confided this with my clinical instructor before during a one-on-one evaluation and she said I will be as good as her as long as I keep on practicing and studying.

Ugh. Just stressed out. Any tips, suggestions? Thank you!

[timtams]

Oh, i feel the same! There's so much to memorize! Anyway, maybe you can write it down in a small notebook. All the drugs that you know or remember by heart cause sometimes writing it down can help you remember the drugs and when you came across a drug that you have no idea on your rotation, ask your instructor about the drug and the side effects and write it down on your notebook. When you have nothing to do, browsing on that little notebook helps too.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

You don't have to remember it all. You need to understand the concepts behind what you are doing. Once you know those concepts, the details will kind of fill themselves in. Same thing goes for doing procedures. Once you understand the why and the what behind your procedures and skills, the steps make sense.