Prioritization and Management Resources Needed

Because management and prioritization questions are increasing on NCLEX our school is scrambling to find resources for our students. We are looking for case studies, practical application exercises, etc. Currently we refer students to the Kaplan NCLEX review book and students have found it very helpful but we have found little to use in our classes and for testing purposes. Any of you having the same problems? We would also like to hear from other programs about how much critical care and ICU type content you carry in your curriculum. (ours is a ladder ADN program).

The answer to your question, may be in your question. You are seeking "practical application exercises", these are right in front of every nurse educator each day. Each nursing student in the program has at least one patient per clinical day, these are your practical application exercises. Craft your students' processing of clinical experiences (care plans, prep sheets or other written documentation of their clinical experience) to focus upon the concepts of management and prioritization, integrating these two concepts into whatever framework you use as a model for patient care. It isn't enough to just evaluate these concepts on objective tests, they have to be integrated into each nursing students experience (theory, lab and lecture). When this happens the students will begin to think and act from this framework.

Also, clincial instructors can find numerous real life examples each and every day with their students. Quickly writing your own observations of practical examples at the end of each clinical day will provide you with a reference to write your own critical thinking exercises and NCLEX style questions. In a short amount of time you can assemble quite a pool of practical experiences. Faculty can peer review the case studies, critical thinking exercises, and NCLEX style questions before they are used as measurement tools in your curriculum.

You and your nurse educator colleagues are more than qualified to do this.

To answer the second part of your question, the ADN programs that I have been associated with do not have planned critical care clinical experiences. Theoretical concepts are presented in nursing class and in the second of the two med-surg nursing course they are assigned to complex patients (vents, etc.) on the general medical-srugical units.