Med surg rn certification

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  1. What is essential to Med Surg Cert RN review?

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      Review of body systems - e.g. textbook learning
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      Practice questions - e.g. flashcards with rationale
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      Personal experience in med-surg nursing
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      Specific resource (please comment!)
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      No prep necessary.

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Hi all,

I'm studying for the med surg certification. I've been a nurse 8 years in a large metro hospital float pool, and am comfortable on medical, surgical, orthopedic, neurovascular, cancer care, cardiac care, stepdown, observation units.

I'm motivating myself to review everything via an online review series that has deadlines. It's comprehensive, but my brain has trouble being engaged with it because it's a lot of stuff I already know. I know people can just show up to the test and pass just fine, but I worry about wasting the $300 or whatever it is. In school, I always got all A's, but always studied hard too.

There ARE things I don't know, like every med for every disease and exactly how meds work (example below). Should I study hard-core learning each piece of things I don't know about, or should I focus on it being a general review and not sweat details?

(right now reviewing Neurology and thinking about Parkinson's meds, I could name Sinemet as a Parkinson's med--and probably pick Mirapex and Requip from a list--I can describe nursing interventions and teaching... but looking at a list on a review slide, I see Tasmar and Compan listed as COMT inhibitors... I know nothing about those, or that there are also NMDA and MAO-B inhibitors used, which I also couldn't tell you anything about). Where is it OK to stop?

Thank you!

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Specializes in Medical-Surgical/Float Pool/Stepdown.

As a CMSRN, it's good to review stuff but I found the test to be more about experience combined with knowledge. I'm a floater too and I know my increased exposure to different Pt's and procedures, etc helped out a lot. Plus you know before you leave the testing center if you passed or not if you take it via computer! Good luck!

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