NCLEX thoughts on degree of difficulty

[iloveclay]

I had some thoughts about the NCLEX. Some background, I tested once for the boards back in 1977 and passed. I practiced for about 12+ yrs. orthro, med-surg and nursing home). I don't remember if I was nervous about taking or not. There were 5 sections, medical, surgical, peds, OB and psych. And were given over 2 days and we waited 4-6 weeks for results. I left nursing and went back to college and received a mechanical engineering degree and I let my license lapse.

Now I want to go back to working as a nurse. Engineering in my state (MI0 is primarily in the auto field. Anyway, so here I am.

I read the Saunder's book cor content and am following Suzanne's plan.

On doing q's. I've found some q's to be extremely easy, these would be analysis and application. The repetition of doing something over and over just continues to reinforce your learning. I speak of my time of working on the floor. I can still visualize certain pts, their diagnosis, procedures, how to prepare a pt for surgery, lab results, meds. But there is a lot of content ( peds, cardiac, renal, endocrine) that I didn't have any exposure. Hence, my extensive prep work.

Of course, degree of difficulty is subjective. One of my questions is, is it really as hard as everyone says it is? And if you get cut off at 75 then that means only 60 q's were used to evaluate you. Course, maybe someone didn't fail the extra 15 q's. Maybe they got those right. And maybe the reason it was hard was because of those 15 q's. And could account for those meds nobody heard of.

I am testing at the end of September. I feel like confident and positive yet at the same time a little fearful and apprehensive.