KatherineFisher

I just found out about the contest. Look forward to submitting an article soon.

Hi medicaljohnny, I'm new to this site, but I've been a LVN for about 5 years. I also tutoring nursing students in the LVN program. I do not know where you are from, but just letting you know that I have yet to find a nursing programs that require or test on the same things. Every state and school is different. I'm in East Texas and one similarity among our schools are the classes you can take before LVN school. They are not pre-reqs. These classes are taken during the 12 months of LVN, unless you take them before you get into the program. It's a choice to get ahead or to take a larger load of credits each semester. I did not take them in advance because I wanted to start my career asap. Taking these early would have set me back. However, some of the students that did not get into the nursing program first string, used their extra time to take these courses-Nutrition, Health, Anatomy I. These were all required at our school. Also, the books for each school are different, but the local book stores (like, BooksAMillion or Barnes and Noble) have a huge selection of books to start studying. You can even get pharmacology books that will be a huge benefit to help you in school. In school, they had us use large index cards to write the name of the drug, names the drug also has like generics, how the drug is used in the body-mechanism of action (is it broken down by the liver or kidneys so to speak) this is important if you have a patient that has damage in either of these two organs, then we had to list all of the uses for the drug so we could know why the patient was taking the drug, and last we had to know every side effect. All of these things were to be memorized because the instructor wanted to know these before we could administer the medicines in clinicals. If we couldn't tell her about the medication, then we were unprepared to give the medication because it could be unsafe for the patient and we didn't know. If you do start memorizing these things for the meds, start with all the basics like acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, then look up meds for GERD, Nausea/Vomiting, Narcotics and non-narcotic pain relief-and know the classification of each, then you may start on some psychotropic meds. This should give you a good start. As for anatomy, we had to learn it all. We had tests that we had to list every bone in the body, every vein, muscles, parts and so-on. These were all from memory too, no word banks. I studied for hours to remember everything in A & P. Hope this helps. Good Luck. And use your resources of local libraries and book stores, it will boost your confidence and your grades.

Giving new perspectives to ongoing situations and/or problems.