Studying with Saunders

[beatanxiety]

Hey guys, my NCLEX is a month away from now and I'm using Saunders and Uworld to prepare myself for this god-forsaken exam. As I was going through the content (my study plan was to do at least 2 chapters a day), I underestimated the amount of information that's been thrown at me. It's taking me way too long to write notes for each chapter than to actually study.

Out of curiousity, for those who worked with the Saunders textbook, how much did you rely on it? And how did you go about note-taking without writing every single thing down? As I go on throughout the chapters, I'm going crazy with the amount of information that I think IS relevant when in reality, it probably isn't something I should spend a huge time on.

I know I should focus on the UWORLD and it's rationales, but I don't feel confident if I don't have a solid understanding of the foundation... And from my test scores, I'm lacking. I know this question is rather vague, but I'm curious as to how others have used the textbook to their advantage. Suggestions?

[ArceusAlpha]

To be honest, when I used Saunders, it was information overload. There were definitely a lot of good information to know (especially the red highlighted texts which actually helped me answer several NCLEX questions!). I also used UWorld, and I relied mostly on that AFTER quickly going over Saunders. Most of my friends also had Saunders, but used it casually but no excessively.

What I did with Saunders was read the chapter (not entirely, you just need to try to figure out what info should be studied and what info can be ignored---up to your discretion really) and answered the questions on each chapter. The questions on Saunders is NOT NCLEX styled questions but they test you on the content of the chapter. If I got less than 65% wrong, I would re-read the chapter. I only wrote notes on chapters that I knew I had little exposure on like oncology and pediatrics. Otherwise, that's all I did with Saunders.