First, I'm starting RN school this January. Through all my prereq's like A&P 1 and 2 and their respective labs, and also Microbiology and it's lab and EVERY SINGLE other class (including all my psych, basic chem/biology, and honors classes) I've never bought (or rented) the, "required" text books for the classes. I've also aced these classes without the text books. Anything I've needed I've gotten from my lecture notes, PowerPoint's from the teacher, or the internet. I've never bought a text book, and I don't really plan on buying any nursing text books.
What do you think? They are really expensive, and I don't think I'll need them...
I have hardly touched most of my books, but there might be a rare teacher who assigns homework from the book. I have bought most of them, but almost all of then were precious additions. It has never once mattered. I've saved a ton of money that way, paying 10 bucks a book vs 110. I'm a A and B student, graduating this fall with my BSN. Most of our tests come straight from lecture.
There are a couple of books that are very handy to have..nursing diagnosis, drug book and maybe an APA manual if you don't know it well. I use OWL Perdue a lot.
I would recommend getting the books just to reference them. Our school tested heavily out of the books and used the test banks from the publishers and ATI. The teachers did not make up their own questions although they did select which ones they wanted.
If you could find where the book said different, a few questions could be tossed. Officially, most schools will say anything is fair game. If the teacher's powerpoints suck and tests from material not included in the powerpoints, you may be in a for a shock. A third of the teachers did it this way at my school. The other 2/3 stuck to the material they covered in the powerpoints.
Like peds. There were a lot more conditions in the book than what we covered in class. However the teacher told us to study only the conditions she lectured on.
Can anyone tell me this: were there any books you didn't use much/at all? They can't all be THAT important right?
It's just really expensive, and I don't have a job and don't plan on having one throughout the entire 2 years of going to RN school. I also plan on being debt free at the end of it .
Books are obscenely expensive. I believe you should have full access to an excellent Med surg text (I like Lewis, actually) and a good pharmacoloy text. I can't speak to peds or ob or psych.
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Julesmama28
435 Posts
I have hardly touched most of my books, but there might be a rare teacher who assigns homework from the book. I have bought most of them, but almost all of then were precious additions. It has never once mattered. I've saved a ton of money that way, paying 10 bucks a book vs 110. I'm a A and B student, graduating this fall with my BSN. Most of our tests come straight from lecture.
There are a couple of books that are very handy to have..nursing diagnosis, drug book and maybe an APA manual if you don't know it well. I use OWL Perdue a lot.