Medsurg+pharm+patho=failure set up

[detroitmercy17]

I'm a sophomore nursing student through UD MERCY at Aquinas college. I cannot BELIEVE these three classes are in the same semester. I just passed my first exam from the semester and woohoo--- 1/9. Poor record, but it's all so close. I need some serious insight on any NCLEX clues or hints and more importantly, how to remember these darn drugs and diseases. Please please please somebody help either by input or support. So much negativity weighs a person down.

[rosy3]

hi,

well, i am surviving nursing school. i will tell u for patho watch he video on you tube. hey are good. some videos of dr. najeeb. hey help u grasp good. for pharmacology i think videos of professor fink are good but i have no watched this.

for med surg., buy hurs online review. and listen to it. it is good for content and will help u understand things.

take care, hope this helps

rosy

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

hi,

well, i am surviving nursing school. i will tell u for patho watch he video on you tube. hey are good. some videos of dr. najeeb. hey help u grasp good. for pharmacology i think videos of professor fink are good but i have no watched this.

for med surg., buy hurs online review. and listen to it. it is good for content and will help u understand things.

take care, hope this helps

rosy

Please don't use txtspk here. It's not allowed per our Terms of Service (TOS) and it's almost impossible to understand you.

OP, you're gonna think this is weird, but seriously, get the Physiology Coloring Book at Amazon and do it. It's not a joke, but a real textbook You can thank me later-- lots of folks do. I find that people who are struggling with patho don't have a good grasp of normal physiology, and this gives them a firmer footing. That leads to better ways to understand disease, how drug classes work, and how it all fits together.

Physiology is the backbone of everything we do in nursing. Think about it-- if people didn't have some sort of physiological derangement, they'd be at home, not in our care facilities.

[sandytoes]

I am a big fan of drawing things out. Make a game plan for each condition that you are looking at. It's likely that your med/surg and patho/pharm overlap talking about conditions a lot anyway so this will be helpful. So for each condition you are learning about I would make a list of WHY this happens (just a few bullet points to help you understand the process), what a patient with this condition looks like (signs/symptoms) then a list of treatment options (meds, surgery, whatever it is for that condition), then a list of nursing considerations (ie: elevate HOB, apply o2, check sats, suction at the bedside, check blood sugar, etc whatever nursing things you need to remember for that condition).

I know that there is a TON of information often presented in PPT or books, but you really just need to understand WHY it happens, what it looks like and how we are going to fix it. From there, I find that I can reason my way into and out of a lot of questions I get on exams. Also, youtube is GOLD for understanding conditions!! If you dont understand something, google it and watch videos until you do! There are a lot of great ones out there that break it down.

Last bit of advice - get a good NCLEX book (or 2 or 3 or 4) and do practice questions. If your exam is on respiratory, in your NCLEX books, find the respiratory section and do a ton of questions. You will learn where you are weak, read the rationales they give for the answers, and you may surprise yourself and see some of those questions on your test! (this has happened to me more than once!).

Good luck :)