NCSBN NCLEX review / learning extension

[MisfitSN, BSN, RN]

Hello all,

Just wanted to add my nclex story here and give a review of the services I used. I graduated in 12/14 and my program pre registers us for Kaplan. I enjoyed the material Kaplan gave us because it was pretty complex and offered more than enough questions. The decision making tree I wasnt too fond of or the classes where we discussed the decision making process and rationale, but I used them anyway. Unfortunately, when I sat for my exam in January I did not pass. I got all 265 questions many many sata and delegation questions and meds (nnon dosage). I was devastated, I felt hollow and just wanted to be in a coma until I could take it again.

Fast forward through 4 months self loathing, landing a nursing job pending the results of my second attempt and a move cross country. A former classmate informed me of a review they used that I hadn't heard of before- NCSBN. Although the material seemed easier by just a bit than Kaplan I felt that it was close to what I saw on my first attempt and gave some decent tips on how the questions were structured, its written bh the same people who write NCLEX so that gave me some piece of mind. I did the 3 weeks course ($50) and made a study plan. There were enough questions total to keep me busy every day for 3 weeks. I memorized as much of the material as possible and used YouTube videos to freshen up material I wasn't too knowledgeable on. I also prayed novenas for it (thank you St.Jude for being an intercessor for me to God).

The morning of the test, ate breakfast, prayed, went to the center and took the exam. This go around I had lots of delegation, meds, a few dosage, ob/pedi, and lovely lovely ekg scripts. I got 265 again was sure this meant I failed but I continued through it cause hey I failed once so I was prepared for that heartache again. After the exam I took my mind of it by going out. Since I took my exam on Saturday I wasnt sure how soon I could get quick results, but today (Monday/48hrs later) I logged in and paid to find out..."PASS"! I am now in the ranks of the BSN-RN.

So, to anyone with questions pertinent to my story I wanted to put this information out there. And thank the Allnurses forums for continuing to provide information on a variety of topics as well as being a place to vent.

The exam is just that an exam, my anxiety and negative self talk were the hard part to overcome so don't do that to yourself because you have more important things to focuse on like practice questions!

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Moved to the NCLEX forum

Congratulations

[2013rn2BScorpio]

Congrats! How did you study meds?

[MisfitSN, BSN, RN]

Sorry about the late reply 2013rn2bscorpio, I studied using the charts provided by ncsbn and some of the major youtubers out there like michael linares. I also studied them by classification; antipsychotics, calcium channel blockers etcetera as I felt that would give me a good overview as there are far to many for me to guess which might have been more important. But for meds like dig, theophylline, morphine, lithium major medications that I knew would be covered I reviewed more in depth to understand their mechanisms of action and special considerations. Hope that is helpful.