Passed!!! Here are my tips...

Hi everyone!

Wow. It was a long time in coming, and it was a second try, but I finally did it. And passed! Whew! What a relief! Now comes the hard part - actually putting what I've learned into practice...

Well, anyway, first I want to thank you all for all the times you supported me when I was a nervous wreck. Lol I couldn't have done it without you! Thank you so much! After the first time I was pretty down for a week or so, and then I decided to finally get back on track. And then it started.

Mostly I stuck to the advice of doing as many questions as I can. Everyday. Something to work on, beside just studying all my notes. I tried using Saunders at first, but I didn't like the CD, so I tried Exam Cram. As soon as I started it, I knew there were a LOT of similar questions on the test (this was my second time taking it). As for content review, the exam cram book is good - it lists a lot of the signs and symptoms in order right underneath each disease, but if you can afford it, do HURST review. It was awesome. Before that I did Kaplan, but I didn't find that it helped since I didn't use any of their strategies in answering ANY of the questions. Anyway, it didn't work for me.

You want to review infection control. And also priority and delegation. LaCharity was the best for this. I didn't do the whole book, and don't worry if you don't get a 100% in each chapter. I think someone mentioned here that 65 -75% is good enough? My last Kaplan score when I did a test was 58%. So YOU CAN do this! Someone else was saying that the best way to do this is to do as many DIFFERENT kinds of questions as you can, and I agree - get SEVERAL books or CDs, not just one. That will best prepare you for how they may word the question. And like I said, do as many as you can. You don't have to go overboard - you should have a good idea when you're about ready to move on to a different CD (the exam cram CD can get repetitive to be sure), but always keep moving (if your not doing questions, study your notes) - try to do something everyday and KEEP YOUR MOMENTUM UP. That will be key.

Just remember - it's just a test. You can master it.

Best of luck!