voodoo

Good on ya'all!!! Not sure how I made it on the MS thread, but cool. It's a small, but big world, and now you are part of it. Voodoo in KC.

What I meant was learn the material and you will be prepared to apply your knowledge appropriately. Memorizing never worked for me either. If you have a solid base, you should be ready to tackle those fun SATA's. You will also be a better nurse. Best of luck to you.

Learn/memorize what goes with the biggie disease processes: TB, MRSA, HEP A/B/C, etc.. and you should be ok. Think it through.

Starting salary for new grads is $21.50 @ KU, $21.49 @ Children's Mercy, $20.25 @ St. Luke's. Night and weekends vary. CMH does offer critical care differential. Hope this helps.

As a new male grad, I disagree with New Male Grad. Sorry, but ATI is a great tool to have. It may not be the end all, but it adds another dimension to preparing for the NCLEX. I wished I had used it more in school. I thought it trained me well to think through NCLEX like questions. I also used Saunders and Mosby's. I liked them all. I thought ATI best prepared me for test stamina. To each his/her own...

Just read you passed. Awesome!!!

I took it a few weeks ago and had 8 math questions and a bunch of SATA's. Test shut off @ 75 and I passed. My guess is you did well. The freaking out part is totally normal, but borders on cruel and unusual. I thought I'd relax after the test, but couldn't until I got the results. Try to have some fun if you can. As they say, you can't un-ring a bell. Best of luck!

I'll try not to confuse things. Start on the right side of the = sign with the wanted quantity/desired quantity. For instance, we need to know how many mls to give. So, = ? mls. Now start to work the problem backwards. To the left of the = we need something in the problem that has mls in it, like 5 mls of some drug contains 100 mgs of the drug. Be sure that you keep mls in the numerator spot as you'll see shortly. Let's say the order was for 80 mgs to be given once/day and you're figuring our how many mls. To the left of the = we now have 5ml/100mg. The order was 80 mg which you now put to the left of the 5ml/100mg. The mgs cancel out and now you have a basic math/algebra question. 80*5/100=4mls to be given. This method really helps with the longer questions and with drip factors. Email if you want more info or I could give you the address to order/search for the book. Trust me, I'm no math wiz. But this system works.

I think it's a good idea to know the diseases that show up as compare/contrast in the boxes and tables of our text books. Addisons/Cushings, AGN/Neph Synd., L side CVA/R side CVA, Ulc. Col./Crohns, upper/lower motor neuron stuff, Bipolar/Schz, Previa/Abrupto, hypo/hyper (insert whatever here), and more. It seems like these are the kind of diseases and related treatments/S&S/interventions/outcomes that show up in the fun SATA questions.

I took the NCLEX 5/30/08 and had 6-8 drug calcs, all requiring some conversions. Know your metric conversions ie: mcg/mg/g/kg, lbs to kgs, and oz's to mls and you should be fine. The 1 thing that sort of freaked me out a bit was having to enter my answers in whole numbers. I hadn't seen this in any study prep. By about my 5th question, I was thinking I had screwed up (instead of entering 12.7 I would enter 13 as my answer based on needing to enter a whole number). I finally got a lengthy ped's drug calc that asked the answer be entered using a decimal. Whew! My last question took at least 7 steps and I had to pay close attention to what it was asking, something like figuring out the total dosage to be given in 24 hours and figuring out the dose to be given each time since it had been ordered TID. Once I settled down, I realized the questions had been getting progressively more difficult which I guess is good. My advise is to use the system that works best for you. I was taught by a teacher who wrote a book about drug calcs using the "backwards method." Once I learned that, I was fairly comfortable with any question. Good Luck! I'm betting you do well. Voodoo, RN

I'm sure I missed something along the line... are/is Bunnyhunter and Missmykids the same person??? Anyway, whomever passed the NCLEX, good on you! And good luck to all those taking the test in the future!

I took it 5/30 @ 8 am and had my results 48 hours later at Peasrsonvue.com/nclex, though it did cost me $7.95. It was money well spent. VERY relieved.

Good thread! Took the test Friday. 75 questions. Ponied up $7.95 to find out I passed yesterday. Time to have a little fun ya'all. Good luck to all the June testers.

I had the same question during my test yesterday. Whole numbers are rounded to the nearest whole number and don't include fractions, percentages, or decimals. I had at least 6 drug calc questions and several had to be rounded. It was generally due to converting lbs. to kgs. and the conversion having a decimal. When I went back and rounded that part of the problem, I came up with whole numbers. This bugged me because I was taught to record my answers more precisely. My last drug calc question required 6 steps, converting weights, mcg/kg/day dose TID to ml/dose. Other than 1 question that asked that the answer be recorded using a decimal, this whole number thing bugged/distracted me for a while. Since my test shut off at 75, I either did fine on the math, or totally bombed it and the computer is saving its energy for my next attempt in 45 days or so...

May 30th group. Good luck to all!!