Med-surge worries... Teaching myself?? How?

ohgoodnessgracious · Apr 2, 2009

"we had to read three to four chapters a week, had a quiz every week and a test every other week. it was just way too much for me. i had a teacher that did not teach properly. through my whole life, i never had to teach myself because i had such wonderful teachers that were very helpful.

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therein lies the problem, my friend. a big, big, big part of nursing school is all about teaching yourself how to understand content. i can understand if teachers were not very good and did not teach well, but there are various ways you can help yourself understand better. have you tried partnering up with people and studying? joining a study group? or have you tried using different sources [different textbooks outside of your required texts]? i found that outside of what they gave me for powerpoints and lecture notes, there was still a lot i didn't understand; that sometimes what the teacher taught wasn't exactly the whole concept of what i was supposed to be learning. so that said, i just learned to be dilligent [not easy for me, trust me]. i parked my butt in a barnes and noble or the library and kept studying til i got it! also, it helps to do questions!

missjennmb · Apr 2, 2009

I struggled with the content as well. Half of my class is gone already to boot after many hoops and tests to get IN to my program (which just attests to its difficulty).

A few things that help me. (my Fundamentals/Med Surg 2/Pharmacology teacher is absolutely horrendous as well)

Read the chapter before class. Do the workbook and end of the chapter questions before class. You won't get a full grasp of the material and you may actually feel like you're not absorbing any of it, but you are. After class is over, read it again. Que in to any of the information that your teacher may have hinted as being important. Mine "hints" but then her tests are on things she never remembered to "hint" on at all. Make notecards on the things that may be important to you. Make yourself a study guide (and pass it around to classmates...gets you huge brownie points). The weekend (or whatever free period you have) before the test, re-read the material one last time.

My philosophy behind this is that I've heard that the human brain generally absorbs 70% of the material it reads. So you learn 70% the first time, another 21% the second time, and another 6% the third time. So theoretically you could get a 97% by that theory. Of course they dont take into account how boring some of the things we have to read are and outside distractions, lol. But, that alone has allowed me to maintain a B average in nursing classes with possibly the most uncaring unorganized uninvolved uninvested teacher of any school I have ever attended.

The other thing that I do is have a study group with 2 classmates. We go point by point and discuss everything that might be on the test. So for Med Surg, every section heading we'll say "ok lets talk about aortic stenosis" or whatever that subheading is, and then we'll each discuss what we know about it and we are simultaneously putting what we have read into words and hearing it from two other perspectives, which sometimes makes it click for me, when I've read the same passage a hundred times and not understood what I've read. We sometimes do this over lunch at a little cafe that lets us spread out and sit there for as long as we need to, which breaks it up a little bit more.

I'm not a straight A student, but with the flaws of my program, I'm happy for my B average. There is not a single A average in our entire Pharmacology class, and we lost 2 people in our last Med Surg class with 2-3 more only getting through because of a last minute "extra credit assignment" that they were given (I have my doubts about the fairness of that as well but thats a whole 'nother can of worms)

NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN · Apr 2, 2009

So I'm currently in med surg and this is what I do. I can't possibly read all the assigned readings with out feeling overwhelmed and falling asleep. LOL !

So what I do is : Focus on each of the diseases patho, s/s, treatment, drugs, and nursing management. Last night after class I wrote these out on flash cards. I also plan to do lots and lots of nclex questions. Good luck !

missjennmb · Apr 2, 2009

So I'm currently in med surg and this is what I do. I can't possibly read all the assigned readings with out feeling overwhelmed and falling asleep. LOL !
So what I do is : Focus on each of the diseases patho, s/s, treatment, drugs, and nursing management. Last night after class I wrote these out on flash cards. I also plan to do lots and lots of nclex questions. Good luck !

really, you need to figure out how your teacher teaches and go from there. This would not work for me b/c nursing tips and obscure tables are as likely to be the source for a question as the patho or S&S of the disease. Those who make note cards and study specific things instead of the whole material dont do well in my class because of it. There's no logic to our teacher's decisions on what information to test and what not to. I wish it would b/c I would much rather have less to do and less "falling asleep".

NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN · Apr 2, 2009

really, you need to figure out how your teacher teaches and go from there. This would not work for me b/c nursing tips and obscure tables are as likely to be the source for a question as the patho or S&S of the disease. Those who make note cards and study specific things instead of the whole material dont do well in my class because of it. There's no logic to our teacher's decisions on what information to test and what not to. I wish it would b/c I would much rather have less to do and less "falling asleep".

Darkrainydays- you're correct. I also find that charts, tables, and diagrams are the source of the questions and I do read and study them. I was just stating what works for me. Obviously we all have our own systems and it also depends on the teacher and class material. In addition, I also watch all required videos and study in study groups.