Just finished my first semester, how to strengthen my knowledge

pro-student · Dec 14, 2017

Was there anything in particular that you struggled with? Fundamentals means a lot if different things. If you problems were with the whole nursing diagnoses, NICs and NOCs then I wouldn't worry too much. Unfortunately, you'll run into it a lot throughout school but will likely never have to deal with it once you graduate. In my experience, each instructor seems to have a different way they want you to do care plans and whatnot anyway.

If you issue was with skills and/or assessment, that is a bigger deal. It's perfectly fine if you're not completely comfortable doing every procedure or a fluid assessment but if you're totally lost then things are going to be extremely difficult going forward. Focus on the step-by-step of skill including the rationales till you really get it. Practice assessment techniques on everyone you know as many times as they will let you. Make sure you understand not only how to perform assessment techniques but what information this is giving you and about what systems. You'll learn much more about the abnormal findings as you go on but if you don't have a good foundation of the basics, it's going to be extremely difficult to make sense of the vast amount of information to come.

In my experience, people who had the most difficulty in Fundamentals had a hard time connecting the underlying physiologic or anatomical basis for nursing actions. Med/surg (and all of nursing, but it will be most obvious in med/surg) is about understanding the underlying physiology/pathophysiology and how that relates to nursing actions be they assessments or inventions. Some people also just had a hard time adjusting to the style of nursing testing and critical thinking. You might want to check out resources on test-taking or study skills especially if you school has something available on campus. I'm assuming you next class is Med/Surg so review your A&P, especially if this was a weakness for you, and basic assessment.