Hey y'all! I want to share my story with you to possibly make you aware of certain things that I didn't know and maybe even bring some comfort to you.
I took my NCLEX yesterday morning at 0800. I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm went off because I was so sick to my stomach! I wasn't even able to eat right for like 2 days because I would get so sick from nerves! So anyways, I prayed CONSTANTLY for about a week. Every time I could think about it, I prayed. I asked God to give me the strength, knowledge, and ability to pass this exam and I thanked him in advance because I know I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I got 79 questions and my exam shut off. I waited till I got home and did the Pearson Vue Trick and it worked! Remember, it must say "Delivery Successful" before you can try it.
I found my license number this morning at 0930. It does not show up on the normal look up. I found it by looking on FL Board of Nursing under "Status." When you log in. it will show you your license number. I still can't find my name under the DOH lookup, but I do have my license number. I guess it takes a couple of days for it to show up there.
What I did to prepare:
First off, I was an average student in nursing school. I made pretty much straight b's. I made one C in parent-child class, but other than that, I maintained a 3.0 through my classes. Before nursing school, I made straight a's. But who am I kidding? I didn't care what I made in nursing school, as long as I understood everything and passed.
-I used a few sections in the Saunders book (yellow one). I didn't go through the whole thing, but I have heard students doing that in the past and having great success.
-I got these Hurst audio's and PDF's that I used. I honestly think that was the BIGGEST help. I felt like I really needed a content review, and these videos were AWESOME! They made learning the stuff fun!! I recommend this to everyone!
-I also did the Live Kaplan review. I have mixed feelings about this. I feel like the doing all the q trainers and questions was very helpful, but I didn't use the decision tree. It did help practicing the critical thinking questions though. My scores:
QT 1: 54.67
QT 2: 66.67
QT 3: 59.0
QT 4: 62.67
QT 5: 59.33
QT 6: 61.0
QT 7: 67.55
Diagnostic: 62.22
Readiness: 63.89
NCLEX Test Info:
-I was always told that NCLEX had both the generic AND trade names on the exam. Mine did NOT. It only had the generic.
-There is a tutorial that you have to go through before you start, and it counts AGAINST your time. It basically goes through how to answer all the different types of questions (SATA, Multiple choice, hot spot, drag and drop, etc.). It only took me a few minutes. Not that major but still. Just be aware that it counts off of your 6 hours.
-Once your exam shuts off, there is a 17 (I think) question survey at the end that you do. Not a big deal, just letting you know what to expect.
-I had a lot of SATA questions, but they were very basic and almost common sense. Some were hard, but for the most part, they weren't as hard as I expected.
-I had a lot of "conference" questions that were about a nurse talking to the staff about some disease, for example, Graves, and it was either you had to know the pathophysiology of the disease, symptoms of it, or diet for the disease. Also, some of the questions would ask the nurse would intervene if another nurse said...blah blah blah
I hope this helped! Please let me know if you have any questions!
