What do you do to study? Share Your Tips

I took a study and test prep course on nursing.com that was invaluable. It taught me how to effective test take in nursing school and had cheat sheets and everything built in.

One tip I’d recommend to students is to check out the pomodoro time management method. There are apps that help you utilize the skill as well. Essentially it helps you focus intently on a task for a set burst of time and take a break. There is more to it if you Youtube it or take the course I mentioned above.

I also HIGHLY recommend the app for phone and computer iStudiezPro. It significantly increased my grades by helping me keep exacting records of assignments and weights of assignments, and also syncs with my Apple calendar.

Using the nursing.com course, the pomodoro technique, and iStudiezPro, I was able to graduate an accelerated BSN program with a TBI.

Nursing.com, Picmonic, and SketchyNursing have been life savers for me. They make learning easier and fun, and significantly cut down on study time. I will be graduating an ABSN program in the next few months, and thanks to these resources, it has not been nearly as difficult as I anticipated.

My biggest piece of advice is to do practice questions EVERY day, on all topics! Read the rationales for every question, even when you get them correct. This will help with retention and cut down on studying later in the quarter/semester when finals come around, and it should also cut down on studying when the NCLEX comes around.

If you are a visual or auditory learner, I'd highly recommend the following Youtube channels: RegisteredNurseRN and Osmosis. Those two channels were invaluable to me while I was in school.

I also agree with what Future_NICU_Nurse_Casti said about practice questions.

Note cards, concept maps, and reading the book!

How does one make a concept map . I never understood the term when people say it

12 hours ago, Stanley Future RN said:

How does one make a concept map . I never understood the term when people say it

I've only made a couple of concept maps, because I do not find them particularly helpful. But that is just me. I know other people who love them. The way I was taught to make a concept map was to place the disease/disorder in the center of the page, and then draw lines to other circles/boxes that have information regarding s/s, lab values, expected orders, nursing dx, interventions, outcomes/goals, other members of the healthcare team, etc. I've attached an example from my early days in nursing school when I was required to make one for an assignment. Haven't made one since, and I have been doing just fine on exams and in clinical.

To me, it never felt organized in a way that made the information easy to remember. I prefer visual representations (Picmonic), or a streamlined approach (think like an outline format). But to each their own.

jcastilleja_ConceptMap_051119.docx

I'm not much for reading, but I do skim our powerpoints from class and flip through the book if I need more in depth information. Most of my learning comes from clinicals where I'm actually working with a patient and seeing what I need to learn face to face. I'm a big fan of practice questions, too ?

You can steal tips from this post which I think will be helpful for you even though topic isn't same