Im freakin out a little, some advice please

[motivated2nurse]

I am studying for my test on spinal cord injuries, IICP, and head injuries. I have read each chapters twice and I answered at least 100 question from various NCLEX prep books. What else can I do to ensure a passing grade on this test. I didn't do so well on my first two exams and I am terrified!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The first 2 test were on cardiac and respiratory and I was confident that I knew the material well enough to pass the test. But I didnt

[melanieisnice]

I would find out why you missed what you did on the first two tests. You won't have provided rationales, but you will see what types of questions throw you. Most people have a pattern of what is confusing on NCLEX style questions. You need to know if it's that you don't know the content, which it doesn't seem that way, or what is tripping you up.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

go over to emedicine and read some of the articles (these are continuing education articles for docs) about some of these specific neuro conditions. look the conditions up in the merck manual as well. reading these things in other sources will help you "hear" them from a different point of view and perhaps turn a few more light bulbs on. keep in mind that you need to know the normal a&p and how the injury or disease is changing that. every time what is normal changes--a symptom is produced. try to list the happenings and symptoms in the sequence they occur. that gives you the mild symptoms to the worst ones. that also gives you which symptoms you need to attend to first (the bottom of the list) because we do nursing interventions on most of the same signs and symptoms that the doctors also do medical interventions on. know the 5 steps of the nursing process and what goes on in each step because many questions on tests will place you somewhere in the nursing process. if you don't know what you are supposed to be doing during assessment and you chose an answer that involves something that is done during the planning step then you've gotten the answer wrong. read the stem of each question very carefully. don't fall into the trap where an answer choice gives you information that you think is part of the stem of the question--these are called distractors and are designed to deliberately get you to chose the wrong answer. do not be too quick to hand your paper in. i started answering questions from the last to the first to shake my brain up and so i would focus better. after you finish, go back and check all your answers again before turning your paper in.

• emedicine http://www.emedicine.com/ (use search box and input a disease)
  
• merck manual of diagnosis and therapy http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/sections.jsp (use search box and input a disease)
  
• also, look on family practice notebook (use search box and input a disease) http://www.fpnotebook.com/index.htm
  

[motivated2nurse]

I did it I passed med/surg with an 80%. Thank goodness, and thank you Daytonite.

[mcknis]

Congratulations Brandy!!! Daytonite is wonderful with any and all education topics. She has so much valuable information to bring to the table. Good luck in the rest of nursing school!