Thanks RN's, BSN's MSN's for responding to concerns for student nurses

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Oct 25, 2015

The best way to learn to type quickly is to take a typing course at your local community college, public technical school or adult education center. You'll quickly go from pecking the keyboard to typing at 60+ words per minute.

Good luck to you!

finalee · Oct 25, 2015

Thank you for responding. You are right I will have to take a typing class. It may be my only solution.

ixchel · Oct 25, 2015

This will sound nuts, but I learned to type well quickly in the mid-late 90s when aol instant messenger was all the rage and my teenaged brain just HAD to keep up with all the beeping boxes on my screen. It was survival of the fastest typer.

I actually recommend sticking with dragon. I mean, overall the best case scenario is developing decent typing skills, but in two months, you might not get as proficient as you'd like. Dictate on dragon. Print it. Stick it on a safe table. The next day, read your printed copy. Have a pen (not black), a highlighter, and a pencil. I feel editing on a screen just doesn't go as efficiently as in print.

After you have your hand-written edits, put them in the document on the computer. Print again. Hand it to someone you trust. Let them edit. See if you like their ideas. If so, make changes.

Congratulations on making it in to nursing school!

llg, PhD, RN · Oct 25, 2015

It only takes a couple of weeks to learn how to type well enough for most things. Don't avoid. Confront it head on, take a class, do the exercises, and get it done.

sailornurse · Oct 25, 2015

In grad school, I had a proofreader partner, we exchanged copies of papers for assignments and proofread each others. English is a second language for both of us so having someone proof for typo's and grammar was helpful.

xxdiscoxxheaven · Oct 25, 2015

To learn to type faster, I googled online typing tests and did them in my spare time at work. Really helped, was 100% free, and easy!

finalee · Oct 25, 2015

Wow llg! You truly answered me in my own voice...straight, no chaser. My first priority will be to improve skills.

Thank you guys, every tip helps.

NurseSpeedy, ADN, LPN, RN · Oct 25, 2015

I learned to type because my papers were required that way in high school. Pretty much everyone had a computer but not everyone had the internet back then and we didn't have any of the wonderful (but not error proof) gadgets that there are today. We just save the document on a floppy disk and printed it out at school. I don't know how good other services are, but I tried to use my iPhone to voice record a lecture from one of my online courses so that I could print it out and listen, rather than type, pause, type and go back to listening....the errors were horrific! The first few words "Hello everyone" were fine but I'm still trying to figure out what drug in pharmacology would translate to "glitter".

Honestly, you don't need to take a formal class. There are programs that you can buy (or by now they may even be free by download) that go over where to place your hands to type and give you simple drills. I learned it in a few weeks over the summer with an old archaic program prior to starting my freshman year of high school. My husband is a hunt and pecker when it comes to typing. He spends hours doing office work that he has literally dictated to me and I have finished in minutes. You don't want to lose valuable study time in nursing school because you are slow with typing. Good luck to you, it's really easy to learn, you'll see:)

annabanana2 · Oct 25, 2015

This will sound nuts, but I learned to type well quickly in the mid-late 90s when aol instant messenger was all the rage and my teenaged brain just HAD to keep up with all the beeping boxes on my screen. It was survival of the fastest typer.

So did I! Now under most circumstances I can type 100+ WPM. It's come in real handy. Before instant messengers I had learned to type with those silly computer games - specifically the one with Mario and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. I'm sure there are more grownup (slash more modern) versions of those games around. There's almost certainly an app for that. Maybe have a quick google and see what's out there? I bet you can find something free.