NCLEX Exam Experience

Nursing Students NCLEX

Published

I promised that once I took the NCLEX I would come back and post a little about my experience since I was stalking these forums through my whole student nurse career.

Studying

Unfortunately, I don't think my study tactics would be very helpful to most... considering I am a huge procrastinator when it comes to studying ANYTHING. However, after taking the exam, I realized.... this exam is impossible to study for... at least for me... and any additional time spent studying would have been a waste anyways. I gave myself a month to "study" for the exam, but I didn't really start doing anything until 2 weeks prior (when my nerves started kicking in). These are the study materials I used:

  • Hurst Review
    • I signed up for Hurst during my 3rd semester of nursing school and took a review during the break before the 4th semester started. This actually helped me tremendously for that last semester because it made everything come together and make sense.
    • I took the review again after I graduated... this was a mistake.. because my Hurst book was already filled out and I was not paying attention at all because I already understood everything. I ended up not finishing the 3 day review because I was literally on my phone the whole time anyways.
    • My thoughts on the Hurst Review- I think their aim for you to understand "core content" is important because I do think it came very handy when trying to narrow down answers on the exam. I also feel like their Q Reviews were similar to the NCLEX.

    [*]Saunder's

    • I tried doing the Saunder's book by taking the little practice exams in the back of each chapter first and if I did poorly I would read the chapter.... however, I only did this for a few chapters and quickly realized that this book is way too content oriented and I didn't feel like I wanted to spend MORE time on content since I already completed the Hurst review.

    [*]NCLEX Mastery Phone App

    • After taking the exam, I can say that the questions on this app probably helped me the most of all. Mainly because the app would ask questions about procedures, drugs, and everything else I didn't know and it really helped me learn to critically think through each answer to try to figure out something I just don't know. I especially liked that they had a ton of SATA questions, because honestly... those tend to be the hardest to get right when it isn't just pure content based.

Exam

My exam consisted of a couple pretty easy questions in the beginning... then it all went downhill from there. I can say that there were a handful of questions regarding drugs that I've never heard of before, so when I got to those I just tried to determine if the ending sounded like any other drugs I knew.... unfortunately for me... they didn't give me any drugs that ended with olol, pril, pram, ect... I was basically guessing on those questions. I had 23+ SATA ( I stopped counting at 23 because I was starting to get really close to 75 questions which was making me nervous). I can say I felt confident that I selected the right answer on 2 questions.... the rest were history.

Honestly, I felt like that was the hardest exam I have ever taken. The funny thing is that my teacher's words came to mind when I was sitting for the exam... "The answer you know and want will not be there". SO TRUE! For example (not an actual test question) ... lets say you started running blood on a patient and they started developing what you would think is a allergic reaction... what is your PRIORITY response?... and you're thinking... stop the infusion, right? Well, that answer is not on there... there are going to be a gaggle of other answers that don't really seem as important as stopping the infusion, but you can only choose one of those. :banghead:

I will say that in MANY of the questions I was able to confidently narrow it down to 2 answers, mainly based on knowing specific content. I had SO MANY priority questions...and again... let me say that someone with airway problems is NOT going to be an option.

When my test shut down at 75 I was petrified because I so was unsure of everything. I finished the exam in about 45 minutes ( I was always a fast exam taker... the more I sat on a question the greater chance I changed my answer)... but luckily.. I PASSED!

If I had to do the exam again, I would focus my energy on exam strategies and a ton of practice questions. Obviously, you NEED to know basic content to effectively think through questions. That 35 page study guide that has been floating around here wasn't very useful for me, except learning the droplet, contact, and airborne precautions (MTV, Spiderman acronyms). Those WILL be tested on and that is pure content that needs to be memorized. I would recommend knowing your lab values, however, I didn't have any questions where knowing my labs was helpful lol.

Anyways, good luck to you future test takers! ;)

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LOL you sound like me. I am a big procrastinator and between this summer and studying for the NCLEX, I still have and want a life! I just rescheduled my date to 5 days after my original but now that I see that there is someone similar to me I now wish I kept the original date. Congratulations on passing the NCLEX!

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