Chribri

Thank you everyone. I was able to get someone from this posting and had my survey completed. To answer the last question there is a babtist church, a Presbyterian church and a few evangelical/non-denominational chuches. There is no "proper" synagogue but I heard down in the city the jewish community has an informal meeting at a Rabbi's home. There is no mosque. We have a diner and a seafood/steakhouse. in the next town there is a Mexican restaurant.

It's crazy. Almost everyone is related to everyone else. My school is down out of the hills. There is a little more diversity there but it is still " cowboy country". This is a big culture shock for me. I moved here from San Francisco.

Yes. My community consists almost entirely of white Christians. There are of course some rare exceptions but let me put it this way. I have worked inpatient acute care for 1 year at this hospital and I can only remember having non-white patients on 2 occasions. I live out in a rural "nursing shortage" area. I moved here for the tuition reimbursement. As a Gay man I am the most diversity this county has seen in a long time.

Yep, they are pretty understanding of the difficulty surrounding finding diversity around here. We are of course encouraged to try first with pt's in our clinical rotations, but have been told if that is not possible any alternative we can find will be accepted.

Hello, I am in an RN-BSN program and am currently working on an assignment that is difficult for me to complete from here. I need to conduct a "diversity interview" but I live in a very homogenous rural town. Is there any one out there who may consider their background to be diverse who would be willing to take 10-20 minutes and complete a survey? It would be a great help to me and you may even enjoy the opportunity to consider how your background is different from the dominant US culture. Only requirement is that you are a US resident and that you come from an atypical cultural background (this is open to flexible definition) Thank you.

No calculators on the drug dosage exam but you won't really need them. The computation on each problem is not very difficult what they are testing you on is your ability to follow the correct steps and do the correct conversion. You are required to demonstrate your work and some questions even specify which method to use in solving the problems so be familiar with: 1. Both the ratio-proportion method and the D/H*Q Formula for calculating dosage. 2. The formula for calculating drip rate and not just the shortcut method. 3. How to calculate a catch up rate if fluid volume is behind schedule. 4. CONVERSIONS. Not just metric to metric, but know teaspoon, table-spoon, and cups to metric. Know grains to grams. Definitely know pounds to kilograms, half of your problems will start with these steps. 5. How to read a medication label and a medication order. Good luck tomorrow.

Eccentricity, While it has been lovely having my typos corrected I am choosing not to waste any more time on this meaningless debate. You have made your choice to hold out for an easier experience. I can respect as many who try will not succeed. Good luck in your future endeavors. This will be the last time I respond to you.

No these are the lecture topics for first semester. I would wait on med surg book until after you take first 3 exams. Diabetes was covered in the last week

These are the chapters we covered and were tested on. I cannot speak for your class personally because changes are always possible. If you take the summer course your primary reading will be from this same book so they should not interfere with eachother. Also this work load is typical of the entire program. The reading list I gave you is largely from tge first 9 weeks and you should expect similar amounts of reading in each 10 week semester throughout the program.

we were offered the bundle. I selected to buy my books through amazon though I think it came out cheaper and that way you only have to pay for the books you will use this semester. We will also be holding a raffle for used books and uniforms during the first few weeks of school where you can get extra material for very cheap.

You should read my first post on this thread it covers preparation for the summer including chapters to read.

The summer course is optional. But if you don't take it you should grab the textbook and study during the summer. I know studying on vacation does not sound like fun but you will learn that you don't really get breaks in this program (or any nursing program) you only get opportunities to read ahead.

I Dream RN (and anyone else who wants to listen in), I used the Reviews and Rationals the most of all extra resources. The breakdown of chapters closely parallells the text book so you can focus on the material we are preparing to be tested on. It also provides the most practice questions (with 50 for each chapter on the companion disk). Also I think reading style is very important. Try to think about reading for comprehension rather than reading for memorization. Read each chapter at a very least two times (I recommend three) and when you reading stop and try to make logical connections between the material. Ask yourself "why" questions about what your reading like "Why does the sound of brachial artery change as a BP cuff deflates and how would I expect a change in cuff shape/size/fit to effect it?". I was able to correctly answer the test question pertaining to this problem not because I had memorized the content of that table but because I had the concept in my head (Honestly the question had a logical answer). This works for me mind you, but everyone has their own learning style and unfortunately there is always foreign material that cannot be easily related back to prior knowledge that you truly do need to commit to memory, but overall you come out better going into these exams with a broad understanding than with a bunch of memorized factoids. Davis's Fundamentals Success is another nice resource if you are worried about tackling the concepts focused on in Nclex questions. It does not offer quite as many review questions as the R&R book but if gives a great little tutorial for dissecting an Nclex question in the first chapters. Many of these questions, especially the ones in fundamentals, are asking for you to select and use a specific tool for finding the priority answer. Your job is to first figure out which tool to use and secondly to apply it properly to the situation. Common devices are ABC's (you always protect airway first), Maslows hierarchy of needs, The nursing process (Look at the question first. is there missing assessment data? Is the question asking for what the nurse should do first? Look at the answers. Are there three interventions and one assessment?), and then various sets of principles you can apply (The best answer should: Be the safest, be the least invasive, preserve patient autonomy/independence, promote family involvement in care, be culturally congruent [without making cultural assumptions], etc.) I can't say anything about the summer class. Heartdrop is the one who said she attended it. I think they basically did what I am suggesting you do anyway. Pre-read the book and complete practice questions. One bonus to taking the course is that you will get instructor feedback and motivation. So if you are planning to be successful then you are planning to read ahead and do a few hundred practice questions. Registering for the course cannot hurt you. I hope this is helpful. I will be at the orientation on Tuesday if you wanna talk there. -Chris SN

Your right. Nursing school should be easy. We Wouldn't want to impose standards on the profession.Honestly, I think most current and graduated Merritt students will tell you the same thing. If you are not a strong independent student, willing to study hard (7 days a week) and ready to show initiative and motivation at the clinical site then you are probably not ready for merritt. That is fine there are other schools out there who are willing to hold your hand through the process, who will lecture exactly to the exams and who will coddle weakness in the clinical setting. The students there may get just the nurturing they need to improve or may just get passed along. In the end though it doesn't matter that you passed nursing school if you can't pass the nclex

Good luck too you then. I am sure you will find a nice nursing school with foliage in your near future. :)