Nurse Practitioner student Passed Certification Exam/ AANP

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To study for my exam I purchase Barkley & Associates, Inc. home study course, Amelie Hollier's home study and CD's and Fitzgerald's. I got them all about a year before I graduated and listened to them all the time. They helped me with school assignments and in clinicals. All of the review courses where good and I don't feel that one is better then the other. Nor do I feel that I could have passes the exam with one review course and not the other. I think that Barkley delivered more information then Hollier, but Hollier had a different method and teaching style that was easier for me to learn. Fitzgerald, I found to be kinda boring to listen to. Very different then the other two review courses. I feel that she delivered the material on a much deeper level then what is needed to pass the exam. I liked listening to the other two then returning to Fitzgerald because she made you understand the why's and how's. In her 2015 review course she said a former student told her that she was too in-depth and I would agree. She also said that what makes a question a test question easy is knowledge and I would agree! I think that the AANP exam was much easier then I though it would be. Barkley and Hollier may help you pass the exam but Fitzgerald helps you be a safer provider.

I also had Hollier's Certification Practice Questions and Fitzgerald's Certification examination Preparation and would refer to them for school exams, etc. I purchased Leik's book in my last term and read through all of the information gradually. I was nervous because I all of the reviews that stated there was a lot of miss information however I only found a few! My last month of school I tried to focus on completing the exam questions. I stopped using Fitz because I was scoring low. I starting focusing on Hollier's and Leik's questions. For any question that I miss I used a note pad to make a list or made flash cards of anything that I needed to review like S/F of Ca blockers. I was focused on understanding why I missed the questions. I think that was important. Doing that I realized that I kept missing questions about a certain medication and, low and behold, that drug was on my test. I was scoring anywhere from 70-90's%. Leik's questions are most like what is on the exam and I loved the way the material was presented. With Hollier's question book, they are not like the test exam (too simple) but if you take them and notice there are some that you keep getting wrong it may help to understand why. I went through all of Hollier's system practice questions twice (once for my school exam and another for the cert exam) I was scoring mostly mid to high 80's. The last few days before the exam I did 4 practice exams. For any system that was lower I just reviewed the material again. I completed all of Leik's questions once then focused only on the missed ones.

For my school's final (8 days before I took the exam) I had to take Barkley's test questions exam. I scored 73%. 2 days before the exam I took the AANP practice exam and scored 84%.( I did not have any of those questions on my exam like others have said.) All in all, I felt the exam was easy because I prepared very well. Time really helped me! Having the time to go through the home study courses and practice exams! I think it was important that I practiced the test questions and used a note pad for a quick reference to review material that I was week in. I kept reviewing that material. The home study courses can be punched on ebay or amazon (thats where I got them).

Going into the exam I was nervous! But there where only two questions that I had no idea what they where talking about. I didn't even flag them to go back too! I flagged 12 others, mostly because I thought that I had to spent too much time thinking about them and wanted to have another look later. I finished my exam with over an hour left and reviewed the flagged questions. I thought about going over all of them but decided not to. I took the post exam survey and had step out of the room to get a printout of my results. I felt that I knew most of the questions but was still nervous however I PASSED!

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