Med-Surg

Personally I would suggest taking what others have said about this particular professor with a grain of salt. I had one clinical instructor who was a nightmare...I mean nightmare with a capital "N". About half of the students in our clinical group dropped partway through, citing the instructor as the reason.

But ya know what? The other half of us passed the clinical and the course. Every one of us are RNs today. You keep up your grind and do what you have to do. Sometimes the people who cluck the loudest are the ones who aren't putting in the work (not always, but many times this seems to be the case).

You just do your thing, don't worry about what other people say about the instructor, because that instructor is churning out nurses too, one of them may as well be you

My BSN program had a very hard teacher teaching us our 2 Medsurge classes. Yes, they were hard as heck, but we learned so much, and when we took our ATI exam, half of our class got Level 3's. I also had some friends fail the class unfortunately. But the way I see it, it was hard for a good reason and prepared us for real world scenarios to be great nurses. Anything worth doing is gonna be hard.

tips:

1. read before class - eg. read the powerpoint before class the night before (spend 2-3 hours reading) and when you go over it in class, it will be fresh and things will stick easier

2. DONT memorize stuff - understand the PATHO ; understand PATHO and everything will make sense - meds, s/sx, labs, etc. Watch videos on youtube about patho (COPD, Asthma, Heart Failure, Diabetes, etc.)

3. do practice questions before the test ; Saunders , ATI , Evolve, Nurselabs, etc. Do verbal quizes with your friends.

Cody,

This is something that is common in nursing school. It is called attrition. I won't scare or bore you with statistics of the number who enter nursing school versus the number who actually graduate. This is the advice I give all my students. Memorizing content will only get you so far. YOU MUST BE ABLE TO APPLY IT! Let me give you an example-

Patient has a potassium level of 2.1

Okay, normal range is 3.5 to 5 (this various depending upon textbook and reference range for the lab that is processing the specimen).

What can you conclude? It's low, right? But what does a low potassium mean? What are we worried about?

Low potassium affects muscles. The heart is a muscle.

The patient more than likely would be transferred to a critical care unit, placed on telemetry (monitoring heart rhythms), given potassium IV piggyback, and monitored closely.

You see- knowing the reference range of potassium is only a small part of the bigger picture. When you study, you should always be asking yourself, how does this apply to me as a nurse? Remember, your test questions are written using the nursing process, ADPIE. You need to understand the assessment, nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation of the disease.

Use the above example in the nursing process:

1.What assessment finding might you discover with a person of low potassium

2.What nursing diagnosis would you give (priority diagnosis)?

3.What goals would you give the patient (Long term and short term)

4.What are the expected outcomes of your interventions? Evaluate if the interventions are appropriate or if you need to change them.

THIS is why we have you writing care plans. It trains you on how to think like a nurse.

I hope this helps you out. If you need more clarification, just let me know.

By the way, I have the reputation of being tough. However, on my student evaluation, my students felt prepared for the next level. We do not want students to be unsuccessful. But if we make it easy, two things will happen. First, as you reach the upper levels, you will fail. If that does not happen, you surely will fail NCLEX.

Good luck!