Introduction/ Career advice

[Espn0305]

So before I ask some questions, I want to give you guys a better understanding of my background for the advice for my situation. I'm 25 married with a 3 year old daughter, I live in California.I'm spent close to 8 years in the military. 2 deployments overseas, Afghanistan as a 11b Infantrymen, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba 31b Military Police. No college experience went in the the military straight out of high school. However I do have a upcoming deployment to Afghanistan as a Private Military Contractor. The deployment I'll be a little over a year and due to the nature of the job I won't be able to take online courses. So I plan on going to Chamberlain School of Nursing in Sacramento, CA When I get back.

So my questions is, Is there any Recommendations for books, study material, etc, to help me study and be better prepared for nursing school. I've been reading that medical terminology, Pharmacology, medical calculations is something go to study. Any Advice would be great.

[guest517]

Good luck on the deployment! You should study a lot of chemistry and anatomy and physiology. Anatomy and physiology seems to be the most difficult of the sciences as well as microbiology so learn as much as you can about those subjects!

[N. Maren]

Hi there! Chamberlain utilizes the HESI tests both for your entrance exam (HESI A2) and for benchmarking your progress through the program (HESI subject exams). Medical terminology, pharmacology, and medical calculations will be helpful for sure, but I would personally recommend a superficial nursing content book as well to give you an idea of how everything fits together. I recommend the book called "HESI Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination" published by Elsevier. It's a book that, in a HESI curriculum, you will be looking at throughout your entire program and it isn't ridiculously long either!

Even if everything doesn't make 100% sense, I think it'll give a good sense of where everything "fits in" (e.g., the chapters are separated by system/specialty and pharmacological drugs are arranged into tables with each relevant system) -- I feel like it's the type of book that might be nice to continually refer to over the course of your deployment.

The rest of your plan sounds good too! Definitely when studying medical terminology and pharm, be sure to look at the prefixes/suffixes too -- it'll help a lot on the off chance you come across a word/drug you don't know on tests. Best of luck!

[Espn0305]

Thank you for the great advice. I do feel a bit behind the curve due to the fact I haven't been in school for so many years. I don't expect to be super smart on every subject, I just want to get familiar with how things are done in the nursing profession, get familiar with the Education behind the nursing field. So when I do enter nursing school I'm not feeling shocked with all the knowledge to be learn because I would expect it and also be learning on my own also.