How I Got Straight A's in Nursing School

Hey there friend. In this video, I'm going to tell you the top three things that I did to get straight A's in nursing school. Yes, it's possible. Not only that, I got straight A's while still taking every single Saturday off. Friend, you can do it. I want you to do this too. Before we get started though, make sure to hit subscribe to this channel, click the notification bell, and let's dive in. So my first tip is probably the biggest thing that I help nursing students with inside of our nursing so us Membership community. And this tip is to figure out the most important things to study. Ah, I know, right? I remember my first few weeks of nursing school. Those were the worst. I went home with a headache pretty much every single day. I was a total hot 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? Did. Do you even remember it? Or did you just totally block it out in your mind because of the trauma? Or were you just so sleep deprived that you can't even remember what happened? I think I had a little bit of both of those going on. It was like probably pretty traumatic that first term of nursing school and I was super sleep deprived. So it's kind of hard to remember now. If you're in your first term of nursing school, my heart super duper goes out to you, but I promise it does get better. These tips will help you a ton. This is the biggest problem nursing students have. Spending so much time studying the wrong things. Friend, don't be that person. You are just going to waste time studying and still not make the grades that you want. I see this happen all the time with nursing students. So the trick is to figure out what to focus on. And here's what I recommend. Focus on studying the things that your professors talk about in class. Now, I know, friend. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that your professor does not actually teach you anything. Or your school uses ATI or hesi so you never know what your exam will test you on. I have the solution for you as well, so stick 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. Now, this is how my program was the first half of our school and then we used the HESI toward the end. So for this situation, what worked super well for me was to focus on studying the topics that the professors outlined in class. Now let's think about this friend. They know what's on your exam. They're teaching you what they believe is the most important things for you to know, which is most likely what they're going to test you on. Mind blown. I know. So focus on studying and reading the sections of the book that follow what your professors talked about in class. This is the best use of your time. Okay, so let's now talk about you, ATI and Hussey students and any other school that uses a test bank for your exams. So. So in these cases, your professors may not know what you'll be tested on. They'll have a general idea, but not specifics. Do not fear. There are still four main things that you need to focus on and these are pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. These are the four 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. So just think back to your exams for a minute and notice that the questions that 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 would expect in a patient, which ones are abnormal, what you should assess for, how you should prioritize, and what interventions you might need to do. So when you get to a case scenario question, think about these four main things. Patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. You need to know how all of these four components really fit together so that you can help your patient in that exam question. Now, if you want a free cheat sheet that outlines this whole process for studying, make sure that you click the link in the description to get that cheat sheet. It is amazing. It's one of our most popular cheat sheets that we have because it literally walks you through step by step. How to study in Nursing school. Print it off. Keep it with you as you study to help guide you in this process. You are going to love it. It's going to change your life. Now the next tip I have for you is similar to the previous one but completely game changing. If you truly want to cut your study time down in nursing school, listen very carefully. The most important thing that 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 patient will lay the foundation for everything else that you're gonna learn. The pathophysiology is what causes the signs and symptoms and what drives your assessment and your nursing interventions. So, for example, if you have a patient with chronic kidney disease, the pathophysiology of that in a nutshell is basically the kidneys are not functioning as well as they should. They can't filter out blood, they can't make urine, they can't get rid of waste products that are building up as much. So knowing this basic pathophysiology, I bet you can already guess some of the signs and symptoms you might see and some good nursing assessments and nursing interventions to do. You would expect to see things like a low urine output because if kidneys are not filtering blood and making urine, you would expect to see edema because, well, all that fluid has to go somewhere. It's just gonna stay in the body. You would also see waste products building up in their blood like creatinine, blood, urea, nitrogen. The kidneys usually filter these two things out. All those signs and symptoms directly connect back to the pathophysiology. And for your nursing assessment and interventions, you will definitely want to assess and track their intake and output. You might give diuretics as prescribed to help get rid of that excess fluid. You'll watch their fluid and electrolyte levels because the kidneys can't balance them or regulate them on their own. So, friend, you can see how these all connect back to the pathophysiology of the disorder we which is why it is so important that you learn the patho first and then you can learn the other three components, Signs and symptoms, Nursing assessment and Nursing interventions. This tip is completely life changing. So this is actually why we break up all of our membership videos 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 all of the critical thinking behind it so you could learn it so much faster. Critical thinking is everything in nursing school and it does not need to be as complicated as you think. We teach you exactly how to do it with everything that you learn inside the nursing SOS membership community. And finally, friend, the last tip that I've got for you that helped me get straight A's in nursing school is learning how to study for finals effectively. And that's really key to be effective and productive in your studying. You do not 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 two to three weeks to prepare. I collected all of my notes and organized them by week of the term that we learned it. So I laid them all out in packets. Week one, week two, week three and so on. Then I would take one packet at a time and highlight only the information that I didn't remember. It is a total waste of time to keep studying things that you already know. It makes you feel super good for sure because you already know it and it's easy for you, but you do not want to take away that time from studying the things that you need to know but you don't quite know yet. You don't want to waste your time. So highlight only the information that you don't already know or remember. Now 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 your book, read your notes and study the things that you don't know yet. Those things that you highlighted. That way you're focusing your energy on and not wasting time studying things that you already know. I have this whole step by step study process outlined for you in that free cheat sheet that I mentioned earlier. So definitely friend. I'm not kidding. Make sure that you download that. I put it in the link in the description for you to snag it. Seriously friend, you do not not want to miss out on that one. I'm telling you it will walk you through exactly how to study in nursing school. So those are my top three tips for how I got straight A's in nursing school. Make sure to check out the playlist that we have for you on how to pass nursing school. That is a must watch. You will really wish you checked it out sooner, so do not miss it. And of course don't forget to hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell. Hit like and share this video with a friend. And now go become the nurse that God created only you to be. Now click on the next video so you can keep rocking nursing school. I'll see you over there.