What works for you? Studying/Med cards/Notes/Preparing

swansonplace · Oct 2, 2013

1. I use to read all of the material before the lectures, being sure to be a couple of weeks ahead right before finals so I didn't have to cram in the last days lecture and the final exam material in one week.

2. Went to school free tutor to go over areas I was weak in before class lecture on subject.

3. Asked professor questions on the points I did not understand in class, or right after class.

3b. Retention increases to 90%, if you review lecture notes right after class within 1/2 hour. The longer you wait the more time you have to put into relearning the material. It does not have to take long, just 10 minutes to go over your notes. Then you have 48 hours to go over the material in more depth. This optimizes your retention.

4. Used review books to make sure I understood the most important points.

5. Tested myself with nclex review books on same subject matter before class lecture

6. Listened to mp3 lectures (feuer) when I was walking around, shopping, or waiting for something

7. Key is to stay ahead on readings.

8. For clinicals, I had tools in my mp3 player: skills pdf, drug quide, any references I needed, also access to internet to look up items needed

9. Had Davis notes in my pocket for subject I was learning, RN notes or LPN notes was helpful also. These books have summaries of key information needed. You can now get them to put on your phone.

10. Good to have a clinical partner so you can help each other out, like the buddy system. Only in the beginning as you will need to be self-sufficient later on.

11. The key to learning is something called active learning. The more you interact with the material and use it the higher your retention will be. So some active learning methods are: Write a question about an area you are about to read, and when reading read with the intention of getting the question answered. When you complete the section, see if you can answer the question. Read questions at end of the section of reading, and see if you know the questions. Draw when reading, watch videos, practice what you are learning, discuss what you read with a friend, teach someone the material you just read. Have interactive software on the same topic you just studied. Do things to make the material and topic come alive. My professor had us talk to patients that had what we were studying. We got involved with the community for what we were studying. For example, for suicide prevention we went to a suicide prevention walk. It is fun to make your learning fun for you. Not just read and memorize. Bring the material to life.

CoolKidsRN · Oct 3, 2013

1. Drug cards template
2. Drug card template to store all of them (we have to place drug card info in our clinical paperwork for that day
3. How are you doing your reading and keeping up?
4. How do you take notes- off powerpoints? follow in book and highlight? plain jane paper and pencil on key topics. I have tried so many ways and not sure what I LOVE yet.
5. How do you review for your exams?
6. Prepare for clinical days- I wanna rock my clinicals

You are on a great track heading for success! I wanted to start off by saying drug cards/template is great to have for both classroom use and clinical use. Store them on your computer and add new drugs from both clinical/class to them. I used to generally skim the chapters before going to class and would take notes on my powerpoint. Depending on the instructor, I even recorded lectures to relisten to later on. Then I went back to reading the chapters and focusing on the key points that were addressed in class. Another thing that really helped me succeed in nursing school was group learning. Myself and a few other nursing students (1-2) would get together and do rapid quizzing sessions weekly over the material that we have learned in class. I always made sure to have the right number of people in my study group and have found to have too many people to be counter productive. Lastly, I want to strongly suggest you speak with your nursing instructor or a senior student to see what NCLEX comprehensive book the school suggests or they found useful. My school had us buy the Saunders 5th edition and we had assignments from that book starting our 2nd semester of nursing school. I found this to be useful because it had a lot of test taking tips and a chapter dedicated just for that.

I hope this helps and I wish you good luck with your studies :)