Test Stress

Update: I ended up passing in 75 questions!

Hi! I'm a recently graduated BSN student who works in an OR as a nursing assistant and will transition into the RN role at that OR once I pass my boards. The comments here have covered a lot but I just want to add my two cents as I had over 700 hours of experience in the OR prior to graduating. Regarding whether or not to do med-surg first, there's never any harm in specializing straight out of school. There's no shortage of nurses at the bedside so if you for some reason really hate it, you can just go back to the floor as soon as you want. There are also a lot of pros/cons with larger vs. smaller ORs - I've been at four facilities so far, two with 20+ OR suites and two with ~10 OR suites. The larger ones split day shift into service teams, which can be really good if you already know what service you like(ortho, general, plastics) but can come with the downside of not learning a variety of services and being versatile. It also means you'll normally be working with the same people all the time, and I've seen that be pretty detrimental for me as a student. Smaller ORs have the benefit of fairly tight camaraderie amongst the staff, it's easier to integrate into the environment, and you can learn all the services available. I've also found that in the smaller ORs it's easier to make yourself heard as an employee, both of the larger ORs I was at didn't address full-time staffs' concerns much, if at all. If you have the option to, teaching hospitals are in my opinion great to be at. Teaching hospitals tend to have really active nurse educators who advocate and make sure you're on track to fulfilling your orientation/residency as well. If they take nursing students/med students/residents for shadowing or rotations, it's an indicator that there's a chunk of them who enjoy teaching - and if you pick up a similar role with precepting it keeps knowledge and rationale fresh. I would not recommend "main" campuses of hospitals overall - they're too big, staff concerns can get overlooked very easily, nurses get thrown under the bus, etc. My best OR experiences were at smaller "satellite" hospitals under the same name, and I learned more. Glad to see more people wanting to get into the OR!

I'm a recently graduated BSN student scheduled to take their NCLEX in mid-July. I've never been a great test taker and it shows on all the practice exams I've been doing so far. For reference, here are my Kaplan trainer scores and UWorld statistics. Kaplan Trainer 1: 53% Trainer 2: 55% Trainer 3: 55% ^Taken before graduation Trainer 4: 43% Trainer 5: 45% Trainer 6: 46% ^taken post-graduation NCLEX Sample 1: 38% NCLEX Sample 2: 42% NCLEX Sample 3: 70% NCLEX Sample 4: 24% ^all taken in early June Current Qbank progress: 52% correct, 875 questions left UWorld Self Assessment: 53% with a "borderline" chance to pass UWorld Qbank progress: 42% correct of the 30% questions used. I still have one self-assessment left on UWorld, and my school recommends that we take Kaplan trainer 7 a week before the actual test date. I've heard from other nurses that content review is much less helpful which is why I've been doing more practice questions (50-75 questions a block, with around 150-200 questions per day) but at this point, I'm worried that there's no way I'm going to pass the NCLEX. Is there anything else I can do at this point to boost my chances other than continuing the repetition of practice questions? I'm aware that test scores don't "mean anything" long term and I can still be a great nurse but the fact still stands that I have to pass to even be able to practice as a nurse. Any tips are appreciated!