JJL618

This was what I did yesterday. Coworker needed a catheter placed in a women, so I told her I would be glad to do it for her. Everything went without a hitch until I went to pull on the cath to make sure the bulb inflated. The cath came straight out, and I was like I know I inflated the balloon. The doctor and other nurse was in there, and we all tried inflating the balloon and it wouldn't inflate. We chalked it up to a bad cath kit. Got another one and inserted it. The bulb still didn't inflate. By this time the doctor had already left the room when my co-worker noticed I had the syringe in the access port not the part that you put it in to inflate the balloon. Whoops! Even the doctor didn't notice when he tried inflating it. LOL. We didn't mention to him otherwise. We just chalked it up to a "bad" catheter kit. ? I'm a new grad and still orienting, so I feel like I am making too many dumb mistakes and not critically thinking enough. I hope it gets better and I feel more confident and not second guess myself too often like I do now.

Ya'll. I passed! I cannot believe it. I had the worst feeling and literally woke up at 2 am shaking I was so nervous. Then I couldn't go back to sleep. God is good. Thank you for all the good vibes sent my way. I appreciate it!

I know it is adaptive and all that, but with the questions I got, I don't see how it determines if you will be a competent nurse. I mean I was asked stuff that I probably will never even think about again because it doesn't have anything to do with providing care to patients. Just my two cents.

I felt the questions were a lot different than I was used to. I didn't use Uworld, though. The majority of them were simple one maybe two sentence questions. Then the answers were elaborate and hard to narrow down to two by the way they were worded. It was the weirdest and hardest exam I have ever taken. I don't know if it I was anxious and trying to answer every one like it was my last question that I ended up making stupid mistakes or if that is the way the Nclex is supposed to make you feel but I feel terrible tonight. I am hoping for the best.

I took my Nclex today and I have to agree with everything you all have said. It was the hardest and weirdest exam I have ever taken. I got the first question right I know for a fact, but then it was downhill after that. It seems like I would spend several minutes on each question before I went to the next one. I ended up only answering 75 questions, but it took me a little over 2 hours to do it. I had 17 SATA and 2 drag and drop. My last question was a SATA, so I thought no way it is going to cut off. After I got done, I would rack my brain about questions and I started thinking of all the ones I got wrong. I felt I knew nothing while taking it, and I know I made a stupid error on an easy preeclampsia question. There were drugs and diseases on there I had no clue about and had never heard of, so all you can do is guess. It is kind of frustrating the way the test is done. Like there isn't a good mix of questions IMO. I had no delegation questions but did have several what would you do first or who would you see first. I feel absolutely terrible. I am depressed, my head hurts, and I am tired. LOL. I will find out in the morning when I look up my name on my BON if I have passed. I don't have a good feeling, but it appears a lot of people don't when coming out of the Nclex. I just pray I did enough to pass.

I just got done. I got 75 questions with 17 of those SATA; 2 drag and drop. It took me over 2 hours to do that amount. I felt I didn’t know anything they were asking. I don’t have a very good feeling and I just got done crying a little over it. But it’s done now. I either passed or failed. I didn’t feel confident in many of my answers. ?

I take it at 8 this morning. I slept like crap, which I usually do before a big test. Hoping and praying for a clear mind and less nerves as I am a little anxious right now. LOL.

Our school made us take two exit HESI's in our last semester. Both 165 questions. They were a total of 50% of our grade, so I know the pressure they induce. I used the green HESI book and did practice questions. Our school has made us do prepu and passpoint since day one of the program, so I used those to do my practice questions. I feel there is really no way to study for the hesi besides that. I find the Hesi's hard but some in my class found them easier than regular tests. They word the questions weird and some can be really long and elaborate. Some questions make no sense. You will feel like you're failing the entire time or I always did on every hesi we had to take. Good luck! You can do it!

I graduated on May 10, got my ATT last week and scheduled my exam for June 5. I was out of the country until this Monday and I started studying on Wednesday. I have been doing practice questions about 100-200 a day. I have a Saunders book, but I don't know if I want to continue using it or just keep doing practice questions instead of content review. I'm already freaking out over this exam because I will start my first nursing job on June 17, so everything is kinda on the line with passing the NCLEX. We take the HESI exam every semester, and they say if you make over a 900 you have a high chance of passing the NCLEX. I made a 1058 on my RN exit HESI, so I don't know how accurate that is. I've heard HESI's are harder than NCLEX but who knows. How are your studying or what did you study to prepare for the NCLEX? Will practice questions be good or do I need to focus on content review more?

I will be graduating in May. I have two job offers but I’m struggling to figure out which would be best for a new grad with no healthcare experience. Both are day shift offers. The first is on a general surgery floor with 41 beds. This will be lower acuity patients so a lot of bariatric/vascular/abdominal type surgeries. The nurse manager is awesome and I would love to work for her. I’ve heard some good things about this floor, but no personal experience. The second is a trauma step down unit. It has 41 beds. The nurse manager is awesome as well. I would love to work for him, too. These patients are higher acuity patients with lots of wound vacs, trachs, chest tubes. I’ve heard this unit has a hard time keeping nurses plus some rumblings about some difficult nurses on the floor. Again no experience with this either and I realize it’s a possibility to have difficult nurses on any floor you work. I was leaning towards the step down unit, but now I’m not so sure because I have a lot of growing and learning to do. I’m worried a higher acuity floor may overwhelm me. I’m just trying to gather opinions, so any help or tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the tips. That sounds better than what I said ? The only other thing I remember her saying was the one BP was 70/40. But she was talking too fast like she just wanted to be done with the interview because she had two pages to get through of questions while writing down my answers. I should have asked her to repeat it and for clarification and I will next time.

I’m about to graduate, so I’ve been applying for jobs. What is the best way to go about practicing or being prepared for interview questions? I don’t have much experience in interviews, and today I had a question in one that I didn’t know how to answer. I was embarrassed about it afterward and during, so I’m trying to be prepared to do better next time. I can’t remember word for word what the question was but it was to the extent of you have to take care of 3 patients that have come into the ED. One patient’s BP is starting to tank; the other two are unstable as well and all are getting vasopressors. How do you manage and prioritize their care since they’re all critical? I answered that it was a tough question and I hope that it was something I would learn as I gained experience. I said I never have experienced an incident like this and hoped it would be something I would learn how to deal with. I also in the midst of this I said I would try to prioritize their care and she said how? They’re all critical? That’s when I replied again that I hope it would be something I learned as I gained experience. What’s a better way to answer a question like this? The whole interview was kinda weird. It was like a just going through the motion type thing and seemed impersonal (maybe that’s how they usually are idk). It was very different than the other 3 interviews I completed earlier in the week, but I want to be better prepared to rock my future interviews since I feel this one didn’t go very well. Thanks for the help.

It was towards the end of the week they told us. I want to say it was a Thursday. Good luck!

Thanks for the tips about IO. One problem was like half a page long. And it said at so and so hour you stop the continuous infusion because your giving an IVPB and it had 3 BM on there. We didn't know how many mL we were suppose to count for that, if any. I was told after the exam you don't count BM. But I'm going to learn and I'll ace those next time. I hope. :)

The syllabus just has vague topics for instance it only states nutrition, elimination, mobility/immobility, etc. Then when we get to the topic they give us a concept map that lists the exemplar. So like the exemplar for elimination had bph, urinary calculi, hypospadias, and a couple extra disorders/issues, but that's all it says along with the page numbers that correlate to those issues. That's why we were thrown for a loop about the I&O. We never had any experience doing those. We are going over those in the F&E part which is next week. But I'm going to shake it off, watch videos about I&O and next time I'll ace those suckers :)