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I had a really difficult time sitting down to focus on reading a book or getting online to do x amount of practice questions a day so I found Saunders Q & A Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination worked the best for me. You can complete practice NCLEX tests or review on a certain area you want to focus on (like safety or health promotion). The questions are on the left and the rationales are on the right so you can instantly see if you got it right and why the answer was the correct answer. The book has a lot of the types of questions you'll see on NCLEX such as multiple choice, math, select all that apply, ordering a list of interventions, etc. A lot of my friends also read Saunders Comprehensive Review and found it helpful, I just didn't have the patience to read it all.

One of my favorites is Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Lynda Van Devanter.

I'm in a similar boat as you - our school requires us to achieve an 800 on the exit hesi in the fall and a 925 in the spring. My speciality exam scores have been all over the board, ranging from 600s to 1200s. Our school has been stressing that the majority of the exit hesi and NCLEX exam questions are based on med-surg content. They recommend remediating on the evolve hesi material that we missed, concentrating most on the med-surg portions. Previous classes have suggested reading and rereading through that green HESI review book, focusing on the hesi hints. The previous classmates that focused on the hesi hints did significantly better (a couple hundred points difference) than before when they were going into the test blind. For now I'm studying with the HESI review book and taking practice exams to prepare. I take the first exit hesi next week so we'll see if this strategy is good. Good luck with your exit hesi, I hope I helped!

I used the HESI Comprehensive Review book and a lot of the actual HESI questions were similar to the practice questions on evolve. Still, I thought it was one of the hardest HESIs I took and wish I studied more. Good luck! Do lots of practice questions and read the rationales!

I think there's a difference between refusing the aide's duties because you want to and refusing because you want to learn nursing skills when the opportunity presents. As students, we are supposed to learn how to do a nurse's aide level of care because when we are nurses we will be expected to know how to give a bed bath, how to put a patient on a bedpan, how to empty a foley. It's essentially the basics of nursing care. But also as students, we are also expected to learn how to do the traditional "nursing duties" like giving medications, changing dressings, etc. Last semester in clinical I primarily did the "aides" work of taking vitals, ambulating patients to the bathroom, putting them on bedpans, etc. This semester our instructor told us that she wants us to learn our nursing duties since that's why we're becoming nurses. Leave the aides work for the aides. So we're doing more foleys, NG tubes, giving tube feedings, etc. I'm glad to have a strong knowledge of the traditional aide duties as I now feel comfortable doing this type of work without a second glance. But I'm also glad to be doing the work that we'll be expected to know when we graduate. As a nursing student, you are there to learn whether that be the aide's duties or the nurse's duties. I can't imagine graduating without knowing how or without experience putting a patient on a bedpan!

I ordered an engraved Littmann from medisave since it was a little cheaper than allheart. My name engraving turned out perfect and everything about the transaction went smoothly. I highly recommend them!

When studying for exams, I always ask myself "what would I need to know as a patient if I had this disease?" For me, that was helpful to remember the disease and the main facts about it (prognosis, treatment options, etc.) and guides what care you'd do as a nurse. Remember, as a nurse we act as a facilitator of learning to the patients. I've seen many classmates study minute details of diseases but not have the big picture on what the disease was and what it did to the body. Sometimes I read the dumbed down information on diseases on websites like webmd or mayoclinic til I get the overall picture and then I go to my class notes to study.

I go to a school in the area and practiced at St. Margaret's last semester for clinical. It's a great hospital and they have a great nursing program! Some of the soon to be graduating St. Margaret's nurses actually taught me a lot as they were preparing for their NCLEX; you could tell the school really prepared them well. Good luck and enjoy nursing school! Time goes fast!

We just took ours today. The case studies help somewhat, but I purchased the HESI Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination review book and it really helped. The book has an online resource through evolve that has practice tests separated by sections that you take HESIs in like Fundamentals, Medical-Surgical, and Pharmacology. It was a nice way to see practice questions like what might be on the HESI and have an organized review book to go back and look over difficult topics.