study Aids

First semester is a bit overwhelming at times. Have you been able to determine how you learn best yet? If you are a visual learner then maybe you need to draw out the concepts and connect the dots between them to retain the knowledge. There is a series that puts the basic concepts into pictures that is helpful to some folks. Not sure the exact title but if you search 'memory notebook nursing' you will find it.

Are you spending enough time studying?

I found that I had plenty of material to study and no matter what I looked at it was basically the same info just presented a bit different. It was really the way I was studying that I had to change rather than going to get different material to study. That gets expensive, quick!

Have you ever used to nursing process to study? For example, if you are studying CHF..pull out of your text what things you would look for in your Assessment of that patient, include all bits of data, s/s, lab values, subjective things, patient presentation/lifestyle/comorbities and then come up with nursing diagnosis that go with what you assessed, then plan your care, intervene and evaluate what you did based on whether or not the problem was resolved. Link in your brain when you would know things improved or conditions associated with CHF would be changed by your interventions..what would you actually see in your patient as a result of your actions? What other conditions would that touch? Draw some tables that compare like diseases so you can see how hypoxia could be an issue in many disease states, what you could do that would work in all cases and what is specific to each disease.

Focus your time on connecting as many forward and backward dots as possible between s/s, interventions, etc..

Ah, that was probably way more than you wanted to know. Best of Luck to you! Don't give up!