NCLEX passin strategy

[Rn 1979]

Hello everyone,

I am in my last year in nursing school and really need your advices. I am currently working as an aid in a big hospital and my director talked to me several times about hiring me after passing my school and board. We have policy in my hospital they only hire nursing students as aids and if any of us fail school or fail boards they terminate him/her. I am asking if I need to take any review courses when I am done and is Hurst review worth the money. My school passing rate for NCLEX is 97 % but I am interested in taking Hurst review and also purchase Kaplan question bank to prepare me for the boards. Has anyone done this before and do you think this is enough to pass the boards? My GPA is 3.8 but I know many students graduate with honor and was unable to pass NCLEX from the first time. Any advice will be really appreciated. I keep reading about many students failed the board for many time and that freaks me out.

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

First.....breathe :)

Many do take review courses, or more accurately they take NCLEX prep courses. There are many types out there, and people pass and fail with all of them. Much depends on your style of learning, and more specifically what YOU need in order to be best prepared to take the exam.

Generally speaking, Hurst and Saunders are well-known as "content" study guides; if you are weak on the content itself, this may be a good thing for you to look at. Kaplan is best known as application or strategy type of review; if your content knowledge is good but you have difficulties thinking through "what do I do now that I know what is wrong", maybe this would be good for you.

My best suggestion would be to read through this forum; you will see this person or that person swearing by pretty much EVERY type of study program out there! You may have to look at the program's websites, thumb through review books in a bookstore to get an idea of what might best help you. There really IS no "one best way to go" when it comes to this. It's rather individualized.

So....take a deep breath, and read on :)