Nursing School Must Haves??

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I am potentially starting Nursing school Fall2010 (God willing) and was wondering what are essentials that you all have that you would reccomend to others?? Things for organization, or whatever...Thanks!! :)

Get a good nursing diagnosis book, it will save you a lot of time on papers.

Saunders NCLEX review. Skyscape for your PDA, a laptop with Mircosoft Word or Apple's Pages. Once you get accepted to a school see if there are any other classes you can take at a community college so you won't need to need to take them while in nursing school and can do other electives.

Before school starts I would read fun books because it's hard to read for fun once schools starts. Oh ya, cancel your Facebook and All Nurses accounts so you don't waste time when you should be studying!

The nursing diagnosis book, what do you suggest--I imagine our school will give us one; when I say give I mean they'll have us buy one that costs hundreds of dollars LOL. Anyway, I am sure we'll get something with nursing diagnoses, but do they all have the rationales and tx info right there or no?

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Regarding laptops/recorders...

If your school doesn't allow recorders but DOES allow laptops, there are plenty of applications you can use to record your lecture via your laptop (the easiest probably being the Notebook feature in MS Word). Unless they were studying your screen there is no way they would know you were recording. Obviously this isn't 100% kosher, but it's an easy way around the "no recorder" rule.

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Specializes in Emergency, Critical Care (CEN, CCRN).
The nursing diagnosis book, what do you suggest--I imagine our school will give us one; when I say give I mean they'll have us buy one that costs hundreds of dollars LOL. Anyway, I am sure we'll get something with nursing diagnoses, but do they all have the rationales and tx info right there or no?

Yes, but some are better than others. Carpenito probably does a better job explaining the diagnoses, but goes into a lot of "fluff" detail about psychosocial and community intervention that probably isn't very helpful for a student in acute care. (She also doesn't often tie back to medical diagnoses, which is a big stumbling block since most students are accustomed to thinking in those terms. As a student in Med-Surg 1 caring for a patient with pneumonia, you have no idea if they have Impaired Gas Exchange or Ineffective Airway Clearance or both, and while nobody much cares in the floor world, your instructors will treat it like Serious Business.) Ackley, on the other hand, gives you the straight skinny - look up Pneumonia, you get back Impaired Gas Exchange, Ineffective Airway Clearance, Impaired Mobility and all the treatments for each - but you just get a one-sentence blurb on each intervention. Thus, my colleagues and I double-teamed with the books, using Ackley to build the plan and Carpenito to flesh it out.

Protip: don't spend $$$ on your diagnosis books. Find out which book they want you to use, and then go on Amazon or AbeBooks and look for used copies. Also, you can usually get away with being one edition out of date on those books, so you can save a little more that way. ;)

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Thanks! I've seen the Ackley online and that looked very helpful but short and sweet and I hear how long care plans can be so I was wondering about that, how you get 30 pages out of that! Very useful info; thanks again.

I try to buy almost all my books on Amazon or half dot com when I have money ahead of time. If not, I'm stuck buying through the bookstore. The girl in our bookstore said the books for first semester are about $1200 . . . course that's if you buy them there, and we use some in subsequent semesters thank goodness . . . I never dreamed it would be anywhere close to that, so I'm hoping to find lots of used books.

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Yes, but some are better than others. Carpenito probably does a better job explaining the diagnoses, but goes into a lot of "fluff" detail about psychosocial and community intervention that probably isn't very helpful for a student in acute care. (She also doesn't often tie back to medical diagnoses, which is a big stumbling block since most students are accustomed to thinking in those terms. As a student in Med-Surg 1 caring for a patient with pneumonia, you have no idea if they have Impaired Gas Exchange or Ineffective Airway Clearance or both, and while nobody much cares in the floor world, your instructors will treat it like Serious Business.) Ackley, on the other hand, gives you the straight skinny - look up Pneumonia, you get back Impaired Gas Exchange, Ineffective Airway Clearance, Impaired Mobility and all the treatments for each - but you just get a one-sentence blurb on each intervention. Thus, my colleagues and I double-teamed with the books, using Ackley to build the plan and Carpenito to flesh it out.

Protip: don't spend $$$ on your diagnosis books. Find out which book they want you to use, and then go on Amazon or AbeBooks and look for used copies. Also, you can usually get away with being one edition out of date on those books, so you can save a little more that way. ;)

I have the 13th edition of the Handbook of Nursing Diagnosis by Carpenito (now Carpenito-Moyet) and in the back there is a section with medical conditions and their related nursing diagnoses. I'm not sure if you were talking about that book in particular but just thought I'd let anyone who has it know that the medical diagnoses are there. It took me until the end of this semester to realize it. :p

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Specializes in IMCU.
Thanks! I've seen the Ackley online and that looked very helpful but short and sweet and I hear how long care plans can be so I was wondering about that, how you get 30 pages out of that! Very useful info; thanks again.

I try to buy almost all my books on Amazon or half dot com when I have money ahead of time. If not, I'm stuck buying through the bookstore. The girl in our bookstore said the books for first semester are about $1200 . . . course that's if you buy them there, and we use some in subsequent semesters thank goodness . . . I never dreamed it would be anywhere close to that, so I'm hoping to find lots of used books.

LOL I got about 12 pages on impaired swallowing alone. It was in table form with intervention, rational, evaluation headings (don't forget sources quoted). It was a blinking masterpiece. There are more interventions than exist in Ackley...

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Specializes in IMCU.
During my orientation (this month) they will give us our booklist, supplies we will need, uniform info etc. They only "equiment" I have purchase ahead of time is the steth and a penlight which was 3 bucks. My dad has an extra BP machine that he gave me to practice on.

Now back to studying :devil:

Me :nurse:

I cannot believe they are having you purchase the steth before hand. I tried out several different ones in lab -- our instructor has Littman samples for us to use, from a Littmann rep.

As for the BP machine -- you won't get to use it. Manual BPs in lab and then you use the facility's at clinical (unless your instructor has you take them manually).

If you get a penlight get one in which you can replace the battery.

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.
I cannot believe they are having you purchase the steth before hand. I tried out several different ones in lab -- our instructor has Littman samples for us to use, from a Littmann rep.

As for the BP machine -- you won't get to use it. Manual BPs in lab and then you use the facility's at clinical (unless your instructor has you take them manually).

If you get a penlight get one in which you can replace the battery.

I bought a Littman before I ever even used one based on the reputation alone. And I got the disposable penlights. I have had many of those doused in blood and figure its just not worth it to clean them and just end up tossing them. But yeah ditch the BP machine learn to do them manually above all else. I dont think enough nurses know how to properly do a manual BP and rely way too much on the machine.

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Specializes in IMCU.
I bought a Littman before I ever even used one based on the reputation alone. And I got the disposable penlights. I have had many of those doused in blood and figure its just not worth it to clean them and just end up tossing them. But yeah ditch the BP machine learn to do them manually above all else. I dont think enough nurses know how to properly do a manual BP and rely way too much on the machine.

I wasn't remarking on Litmann's quality or rep. Given there are several different types of Litmann Steth, if one can, one should try them out before they buy them. There are also other stethoscopes than Litmann with perfectly adequate reputations.

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I have the 13th edition of the Handbook of Nursing Diagnosis by Carpenito (now Carpenito-Moyet) and in the back there is a section with medical conditions and their related nursing diagnoses. I'm not sure if you were talking about that book in particular but just thought I'd let anyone who has it know that the medical diagnoses are there. It took me until the end of this semester to realize it. :p

Don't ya hate when you figure things out/find things that would've made it so much easier in the beginning! We're learning. Sounds like very useful information. Thanks!

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.
I wasn't remarking on Litmann's quality or rep. Given there are several different types of Litmann Steth, if one can, one should try them out before they buy them. There are also other stethoscopes than Litmann with perfectly adequate reputations.

Oh i know, I was just saying that going in blind might not be that big a deal Heck if you dont like it, just hawk it to one of your classmates.

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I cannot believe they are having you purchase the steth before hand. I tried out several different ones in lab -- our instructor has Littman samples for us to use, from a Littmann rep.

As for the BP machine -- you won't get to use it. Manual BPs in lab and then you use the facility's at clinical (unless your instructor has you take them manually).

If you get a penlight get one in which you can replace the battery.

We had an equipment list, including a stethoscope, that we were responsible for having by the first day of lab. They didn't let us try different kinds of scrubs or laptops in lab before we bought them either. As adults, we were left to do research on the equipment that best met our needs.

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