Getting all A’s in Nursing school without losing your mind, and still having time for what is important to you. YES it is possible!
Here’s what we’ll talk about:
– How to PASS nursing school
– How to study the important concepts and fully understand them
– How to focus your efforts on the topics you don’t fully understand
– Stop occupying all of your time with what you already know, or what you don’t need to know.
TIME STAMPS:
– What to focus your study time on (1:50)
– What to do if your school uses HESI or ATI (2:55)
– What’s the MOST important thing for you to study (4:39)
– How to study for FINAL EXAMS (7:08)
CHECK OUT THE FULL VIDEO HERE ON YOUTUBE.
Get your time (and sanity) back in nursing school with these tips!!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, friend! In this video I’ll going to tell you the top 3 things I did to get straight A’s in nursing school. And not only that, I got straight A’s while still taking every single Saturday off. Yes it’s TOTALLY possible, and I want you to do it too! Before we get started though, make sure to hit the subscribe button and click the notification bell, and let’s dive in.
So my first tip is probably the biggest thing I help nursing students with inside of our NursingSOS Membership Community, and that is figuring out the most important things to study. I remember my first few weeks of nursing school, those were the WORST. I went home with a headache pretty much every day, I was a mess. I definitely did NOT know how to study or what to focus on and I was running myself into the ground trying to get good grades.
How was your first term of nursing school? Was it as bad as mine, maybe worse? Do you even remember it, or did you block it out because of the trauma, or were you just so sleep deprived that you can’t remember what happened. I think I had a little bit of both going on. It was a pretty traumatic experience that first term of nursing school.
If you’re in your first term of nursing school, my heart really goes out to you. But I promise it does get better. And these tips will help a lot.
So this is the biggest problem nursing students have, spending so much time studying the WRONG things. Don’t be that person. You’re just going to waste time studying, and still not make the grades you want. I see this happen all the time. So the trick is the figure out what to focus on, and here’s what I recommend: focus on studying the things that your professor talks about in class.
Now, I know, friend. I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking your professor doesn’t actually teach you anything; or your school uses ATI or the HESI so you never KNOW what your exam will test you one. I have the solution for you so stay with me.
Let’s first talk about how to study if your professor either WRITES your exam, or at least has seen it so they know what’s on it. This is how my program was the first half, and then we used HESI toward the end. So for this situation, what worked SUPER well for me was to focus on studying the topics that the professor outlined in class. Think about it – they know what’s on the exam, and they’re teaching you what THEY believe are the most important things for you to know, which is most likely what they’ll test you on! So, focus on studying and reading the sections of the book that follow what your professor talked about in class. This is the BEST use of your time.
Okay, now let’s talk about you ATI and HESI students, and any other school that uses a test bank for exams. So in these cases, your professors may not know what you’ll be tested on. But do not fear, there are still 4 main things you need to focus on: and those are the pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. These are the 4 main things that you will be tested on during nursing school, specifically in your med-surg classes but also in others, like critical care, maternity, and fundamentals. Just think back to your exams for a minute, and notice the questions you get. Most of them will be some form of this: they’ll test you on what signs and symptoms you should look for, or which one’s are abnormal, what you should assess for and how you should prioritize, and what interventions you need to do.
So when you get a case scenario question, think about these 4 main things: patho, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. You need to know how all of these 4 components fit together so that you can help your patient in that exam question.
If you want a free cheat sheet that outlines this whole process, make sure you click the link in the description to get that cheat sheet. It’s one of our most popular cheat sheets, because it walks you through exactly how to study in nursing school. Print it off and keep it with you as you study to help guide you. You’re going to LOVE it!
Now, the next tip I have for you is similar to that, but COMPLETELY game changing. If you truly want to cut your study time down in nursing school, listen carefully. The most important thing you need to focus on is the pathophysiology. In other words, learn the patho FIRST, and here’s why: the pathophysiology of what’s happening with the disorder and with the patient will lay the foundation for EVERYTHING else you’ll learn. The pathophysiology is what causes the signs and symptoms, and what drives your nursing assessment and nursing interventions.
So for example, if you have a patient with chronic kidney disease, the pathophysiology of that, in a nutshell, is that the kidneys aren’t functioning as well as they should: they can’t filter blood, make urine, and get rid of fluid and waste products as much. So knowing this pathophysiology, I bet you can already guess at some common signs and symptoms, and good assessments and interventions to do.
You would expect a low urine output, because the kidneys aren’t filtering blood and making urine, and you would expect edema because all that fluid is just staying in their body. You would also see waste products building up in their blood, like creatinine and blood urea nitrogen. The kidney usually filters those 2 things out. All of those signs and symptoms directly connect to the pathophysiology. And for your assessment and interventions, you’ll definitely want to assess and track their intake and output, give diuretics as prescribed to help get rid of the excess fluid, and watch their fluid and electrolyte levels because the kidneys can’t balance and regulate them as well.
So you can see how they all connect back to the pathophysiology, which is why it’s super important that you learn the patho FIRST, and then you can learn the other 3 components: signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions. That tip is completely life changing. So this is actually why we break up all of our Membership videos in this way: patho, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. It is the absolute BEST way to learn in nursing school because we walk you through the critical thinking behind it so you can learn it so much faster. Critical thinking is everything in nursing school, and it doesn’t need to be as complicated as you think. We teach you how to do it with everything you learn inside the NursingSOS Membership Community.
And finally, the last tip I have that helped me get straight A’s in nursing school, is learning how to to study for finals EFFECTIVELY – and that’s really key: to be effective and productive in your studying. You don’t want to waste time studying the wrong things.
So here’s exactly what I did: when it came around time for finals, I took about 2-3 weeks to prepare. I collected all of my notes and organized them by week of the term that we learned them. So I laid them all out in packets (week 1, week 2, week 3, etc.).
Then, I would take one packet at a time and highlight ONLY the information I didn’t remember. It’s a waste of time to keep studying things you already know. It makes you feel good, sure, because you already know it and it’s easy, but you don’t want to take time away from studying the things that you NEED to know but don’t know quite yet.
So highlight ONLY the information that you don’t already know or remember. The next step is to write out everything you highlighted on a fresh sheet of paper – or many new sheets of paper! And then you’re ONLY going to study THAT. Go through, read the book, read your notes, and study those things that you don’t yet know. This way you’re focusing your energy and not wasting time studying things that you already know.
I have this whole step-by-step process outlined for you in that free cheat sheet I mentioned earlier. So make sure to download that, I put the link in the description for you to snag it. Seriously, friend, you don’t want to miss out on that one, it will walk you through exactly how to study in nursing school.
So friend, those are my top 3 tips for how I got straight A’s in nursing school. Make sure to check out the playlist we have on how to PASS nursing school. That is a MUST WATCH, you’ll really wish you checked it out sooner, so don’t miss it.
Now go become the nurse that God created only YOU to be. And I’ll catch you in the next video.
