How I'd Study for the NCLEX® If I Had to Do It Again

I have walked thousands of nursing students through nursing school, and here's what I've learned, my friend: if I had to take the NCLEX all over again, I would throw out about 80% of what I did the first time, because almost none of it actually helped me learn what I needed to know, understand how to answer the questions correctly, or be less stressed on test day. And this is what I've talked to so many nursing students about, and if you're nervous about passing the NCLEX, then then stay with me, my friend, because today I'm walking you through the exact things that I wish someone had told me before I took the NCLEX. Let's dive in. Hey there, my friend, my name is Christina Rafano from NursingSOS.com, and today in this video, we're walking through the 7 things that I wish I would do differently if I were starting my NCLEX prep. From scratch tomorrow. And be sure to stick around all the way to the end of this video because the very last tip that I have for you is so, so important. It's one of those things that no one talks about. I wish I knew it. It's not actually a study strategy at all, but it was so, so game-changing for me and has been for so many other students that I've walked through and coached. So I know it's going to help you too. It is your golden ticket to passing, my friend. So mistake number 1, this is a big one. Big one: when I took the NCLEX, I studied like it was a giant memorization quiz or something like that. Like, if I could just cram enough information in my brain, like lab values and all the random facts I had to know, then I would pass, right? But here's the thing: the NCLEX does not work that way, especially now with the NGN, the Next Gen NCLEX. That is not how this test works. Here's the reality: the NGN is it just leveled up. It is so heavily trying to simulate real-world experience. So you're going to get a ton of prioritization questions, a ton of critical thinking questions, case scenarios, patient situation questions, all of it. SATA questions, they're everywhere. So it's not just testing you on random facts or how well you have memorized stuff, right? It's actually testing you on, okay, now that you know these things, how well can you actually apply apply it to a patient scenario or patient situation and actually critically think through it. There's a huge difference between memorizing and critical thinking, right? And the NGN is testing you so, so heavily on that critical thinking. There's a huge difference. Memorizing things just means knowing what's a normal potassium level or something like that. But the critical thinking is, okay, now if your patient's potassium level is super high, then what are you going to do about Right? What are you going to assess them for? It's all of those really deep critical thinking questions and those situations that they're testing you on. So here's your key point to this, my friend: you are not studying just to memorize stuff and just to know random facts. I really wanted to know all the things, but that doesn't help. You're studying to critically think and actually apply what you've learned to help real-life patients. That's the difference. Key, key difference there. And that is one of the number one things that I see nursing students get wrong over and over and over again like I did. We come in from our prerequisites, right? We're just used to memorizing facts like in A&P, right? Like anatomy and physiology. You just memorize like all the bones in the body, right, and where they're all located. But that doesn't track in nursing school. That's just not how it works in nursing school. You now have to take all that information that you learned in A&P and you have to apply it in nursing school to things like heart failure and stroke and diabetes and all of that stuff. So everything you learned before, you actually apply it now to patient or a patient situation and decide how are you going to help this patient. From day 1 in nursing school, or whatever day you're on right now in nursing school, okay, start today. I would frame every single thing that I studied around the one question. All right, here it is: what would I do with this? What do I do with this information? Okay, what is the nursing action? What's the priority? What's the danger here going on? What am I gonna do with what I'm learning? That's your question. And here's the key critical thinking point that ties all of this together today, okay? You cannot anticipate what the NCLEX is going to throw at you, all right? They can literally throw anything in the world at you. You cannot possibly prepare for the NCLEX by memorizing every single fact in your textbook. It just doesn't work that way. I wish it did, but it doesn't. But the good news is that you can prepare for the NCLEX by getting really, really good at critically thinking through whatever questions they throw throw at you. There were so many times when I was sitting and studying in nursing school and I was like color coding all my notes and like highlighting everything because you're supposed to make it all Pinterest perfect and super pretty. Like, that makes you feel actually really productive. But that was the problem though. I was memorizing facts, I was trying to make it all look pretty, but I had actually no idea how to critically think through it all. That took me a long time to figure out. So if that is you right now, if that's really how you're feeling, you are not alone. I totally get it. It is not a problem. All right, like, it wasn't a me problem, that's just a strategy problem. That is a critical thinking problem, and we're gonna fix that today. And to help you with this, I actually have a free critical thinking cheat sheet that is so awesome. It's gonna walk you through 9 key critical thinking questions that you really have got to know for every topic that you're studying in nursing school so that you can pass your exams. So just comment the word "think" down below, and I will send it right over to you, my friend. It is going to help so, so much. Now, tip number 2, this is to start practice questions early and do them the right way. And yes, there is a right and a wrong way to do practice questions in nursing school. And I wish that someone had told me this when I started out because I learned this trick way later in nursing school. I actually heard it from a nursing instructor in like halfway through my program, and I wish I had known it sooner. So a huge mistake that I made when I started nursing school was that I just left practice questions until way too far in the program. I never really did them until about halfway through is when I really started diving into them. I was basically already in NCLEX prep mode before I really took them seriously. That was a big mistake. I did practice with a few of them here and there when I was in fundamentals and in the earlier terms, but I just, I was never consistent with them. I never took them very seriously. That was a big problem. So I got it into my mind that I needed to know everything before I actually started practice questions. But here's the problem with that: you're never gonna be totally ready. So waiting to feel ready to do practice questions after you've studied all the things, that is a trap. Do not fall into that trap, because practice questions are actually supposed to help you study. And when you do them early, and when you do them often and consistently, you're really reinforcing the content that you're learning. You learn how the test actually works, right? You start connecting concepts together and really critically thinking instead of just seeing everything as memorization or like different random facts to know and apply to a test question. No, it's all about critical thinking. That's what these practice questions do. But here's what a lot of nursing students miss: it's not about how many practice questions you do, all right? It's about what you do with the ones you get wrong and the ones you even get right. Every single NCLEX practice question that you do, you should be asking yourself, why is the right answer correct, and why is the wrong answer wrong? So the right way to do practice questions is to actually go through those rationales for every single one of them. I know it's hard, but we gotta do it. Even the ones you got correct, because you really need to understand the why behind the reasoning and the critically— critical thinking behind why all the other answers are wrong and why you got that one correct. You've got to understand the critical thinking behind all of it. So this is the huge part of studying in nursing school, because when you can actually explain why the other answers in a question are incorrect and why that one answer is the most correct, then you are so much more prepared to take your exams because you actually know the information at that deeper level. And here's a key point for you that I really want you to know: if you are getting those practice questions wrong, that's totally okay, okay? That's always where we start. That's actually a good thing because that is how you learn and get better, right? I would much rather you get the practice questions wrong than the actual questions on the exam, right? We want to get the practice questions wrong, keep practicing, and then get to the exam and pass. The more practice questions that you do, the more confident you're going to be in doing them, and the more you're going to learn. And of course, the better you're going to do then on your exam. That's just how it works. Practice makes perfect, or at least practice makes better, right? And like I said, I have that free critical thinking cheat sheet for you that walks you through how to connect concepts together and just really connect the dots between everything that you're learning so that you're not just going into your exam guessing things. You're going to actually be critically thinking through the exam question. So just comment the word "think" down below and I'll send that over to you. It's going to help you a ton as you are studying for your exams. Now, tip number 3 is to use a framework so you can stop drowning in your lecture notes and everything else you have to know. So you very well know by now, my friend, if you have been in nursing school for more than 5 minutes You know how hard it is to learn everything you have to know for your exams. Now, one of the best ways to do this is to follow a framework, or a system. Now, the framework I teach and that works for every single disorder you will learn in nursing school is called the 4 Core Method. This is so important. Here's how this works: everything starts with the pathophysiology. This is actually what you should understand first. What is actually going wrong in the body? You have to understand the pathophysiology first because then you will be able to understand what is actually happening in the body that's going on with your patient so you can actually fix it, right? And then you go on to those signs and symptoms. And here's the absolute wonderful, beautiful part about this: once you know that patho THEN the signs and symptoms actually make sense. They get way easier. So when you connect all the signs and symptoms back to the pathophysiology, changes everything. That's when you finally stop memorizing things and actually start critically thinking about them. We are not here to memorize a list of signs and symptoms, right? We are here to critically think, and what they say, think like a nurse, right? That requires you to understand the signs and symptoms that a patient might be presenting with as it relates back to that pathophysiology, but you've got to know the patho first. Then you have the nursing assessment. So what are you, as the nurse, going to look at in your patient? What are you going to assess for? What are you going to listen to? What are you going to monitor with them? What is your priority assessment? This also relates back to the pathophysiology. Again, the patho is a very, very strong foundation here. You've got to know the patho first. And then we've got the nursing interventions. Of course, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about it? What interventions are you going to do as a nurse to help your patient to get better? Now, this one also connects back to that patho. So without the pathophysiology, you wouldn't be able to critically think through those next 3 categories, right? The signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment, and the nursing intervention. When you follow the 4 Core Method, how it's laid out here, you'll finally stop drowning in all the content you've gotta know, because you won't just be memorizing a bunch of random facts like the signs and symptoms, or the assessments, or the interventions, but you're actually connecting everything back to that patho, you're seeing how it all connects together. Okay? This is the critical thinking part in nursing school. It's so, so important to connect those dots. And this is actually exactly how I teach inside the Nursing SOS membership community. I do not just hand you a list of signs and symptoms to memorize. That would be a waste of your time. I actually walk you through the why behind everything so you can understand the critical thinking and how everything relates together, because that's the key when you're answering NCLEX-style questions. It's so important. Now, number 4, you want to focus on your weaker areas and the things you struggle with the most and have an actual strategy for them. Okay, I know this is going to sting a little bit, and I know it's hard to do. I know it was for me, at least. If I had to do the NCLEX all over again, I would really focus on my weaker areas way more and focus on them sooner and more intentionally than I actually ended up doing. At least I know from my personal experience, I really tended and still tend to gravitate toward what I was already good at and what I was really strong in because it just made me feel better, to be honest. It made me feel like I was more prepared for the exams. But honestly, that was a lie. I know those weaker areas are scary. They're uncomfortable to study— things we don't understand or are struggling with, and we want to just procrastinate on, right? We want to just keep putting them off. I know it's hard to do, but the problem is that on the NCLEX, you do not get to pick what topics they throw at you, and they are going to throw at you left and right, just seemingly random things, and they can throw literally anything at you, and you've got to be prepared. Now, for me personally, those two areas were pharmacology and lab values. I'll be totally honest here, those were the ones I struggled with so much. All right, numbers have just never really come naturally to me. Dose calc, that was a huge wake-up call because I could not avoid it. I ended up working so, so hard on dose calc, and that's actually where my 6-step process came from. I have now taught it to thousands, like thousands of nursing students, and have helped them pass their exams because it takes all those super scary dose calc questions and it really turns them into a simple and repeatable step-by-step process that you can use every single time in order to pass. It's beautiful and amazing. So that was a huge benefit of me focusing on my weak areas because I was actually able to systematize it and create this step-by-step process that worked every single time. But that came out because I was struggling so badly with it. And for pharm, same thing. I spent so many weeks just trying to memorize medication after medication after medication, lab value after lab value after lab value. There's a gazillion to know in nursing school, right? There's just simply not enough time. But like I said before, the NCLEX can throw anything at you. There is literally no guarantee what you are going to get or not get on your exam. So I had to figure out a system. I had to figure out a framework. That's how I learned best, because there There was no way I was going to be able to memorize all of those meds. So I figured out my Pharm 4 strategy and I learned the medications by class, not one by one, okay? Not individually. So instead of memorizing a whole bunch of different beta blockers individually, by themselves, I learned what the beta blocker class does and how that acts in the body. And if you want a complete breakdown of my Pharm 4 strategy, be sure to check out this video right here. And I will walk you through all of it. It's gonna be awesome, you're gonna love it. It helped me, I hope it helps you. And here's where so many nursing students get tripped up, okay? So remember this: do not confuse feeling productive with actually being productive, right? So if you finish a bunch of practice questions or flashcards and feel amazing because you got everything right, right, there's a real chance that you just studied your strengths and the things that you are good at. But unless you have gone through those flashcards like a gazillion times before and you really do have them all down, you might be fooling yourself. Okay. So just be really, really careful that you're not just studying the things that you're really good at and you already actually know just in order to feel better about yourself. That's not what we want to do. We really want to make sure that you're focusing on your weaker areas and actually being productive in learning the things you've got to know. The more you practice the things that are hard and the more it clicks, then the more confident you're going to be, and it's going to start coming easier to you. And yes, over time you will get more questions right on those practice tests, but it's going to take time, and that's okay. Tip number 5: master prioritization questions. I wish I had done this way earlier— prioritization and delegation— because the NCLEX is obsessed with it. You are gonna get questions left and right talking about which patient do you see first, what's your priority nursing action, what can you delegate, what can't you delegate— all the prioritization and delegation questions on the NCLEX. And they are going to feel impossible at first because every answer is going to look like it's the most correct one. Now, there are a few principles that you're going to want to use here. Now, if you want a full breakdown of this whole process, definitely check out this video right here so you can master prioritization questions. That video is awesome, it's going to help you out so much. But we'll walk through a brief summary here. The first one is your ABCs, right? Airway, breathing, circulation. I'm sure you've heard this again and again and again in nursing school. We talk about it all the time, and there's a reason for it. It is so, so important. Airway always comes first, okay? A patient who can't breathe beats a patient with severe pain, who's conscious and talking to you right now. Next up is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Now this means that we take care of physiological needs and safety needs first before we take care of things like psychosocial needs. We want to take care of the actual emergency first and the things that are really actually happening in real time before we go up Maslow's hierarchy ladder and take care of things like self-esteem esteem needs or those psychosocial needs. So physiological needs and safety needs, those always come first. Those are the priority. And then we've got two more principles. Unstable conditions are your priority over stable conditions. And then anything that's acute or that shows up suddenly is gonna be your priority over something that's like chronic or has been there for a longer time. So anything that is acute or anything that is unstable or new typically beats something that is more stable, uh, or a more chronic condition. Now these can be really tricky ones. Here's a big problem that I see: nursing students will pick the patient who's the sickest overall or the patient in severe pain instead of the one who is most unstable right now in the moment. The chronic, stable but super sick patient might not be the priority, but the patient who was fine just a minute ago and now isn't fine or might not be fine because something acute just happened. That is something that just changed in their condition. So that is your person, all right? That is the patient. That patient becomes the priority. Now, this is a very, very must-know thing for the NCLEX. You've got to master these prioritization principles. So if you want that full breakdown of how all that works, like I said, click on this video right here, and it's gonna— I'm gonna walk you through all of it. All right, now tip number 6. This is one that I really had to grow into the most. I would say if I were taking the NCLEX all over again, I would make a plan and I would follow it. Seems so simple. Let me tell you what I mean by this. I actually learned this the hard way. I'm gonna be totally honest with you here, okay? We ready for this? When I started nursing school, I really was not very good at planning. I didn't have the systems, and if I'm being totally honest, I didn't really have the discipline yet or the self-control to actually make a plan and completely stick to that plan. So I would start off strong, I would have all the best intentions, but then I would just let it slide over time. I'd have way too many balls in the air and I would overcommit myself, and then things would just really start to slip through the cracks. And in the middle of Nursing Fundamentals, I was studying constantly, but I was really getting nowhere. I wasn't studying the right way. I was so exhausted, I was burned out, was reading everything in the book. I was not being productive. Because I didn't have a plan and I wasn't sticking to it. I was literally just trying to read every single word in the textbook and do all the flashcards and do all the things and all the studying, you know, everything. And that's not a good plan. It was very, very unsustainable. But here's the thing that is super important and super good news for you, for me, for all of us. Discipline is not a personality trait. It's not like you either have it or you don't. But it is a skill. It is a skill that we can learn over time. I have worked so, so hard over the last several years to learn how to follow through on the plans that I set and not overcommit myself and all the things. I have failed so many times at this, and it has taken a lot of practice and a whole lot of trial and error. So if you keep making plans and then not following them, like if you have best intentions to study and you just end up not doing it because you get distracted or whatever, trial and error, okay? Just keep keep going. And the plan itself does not have to be fancy. It could just be go through, you know, however many practice questions every single day and focus on studying your weaker areas. It could really be as simple as that. If you are still a few months out from taking your NCLEX, then you could be doing maybe between like 30 and 50 NCLEX practice questions a day, depending on how far out you are from taking your test. But As you get closer, you're going to want to start pushing that up to around 100 practice questions a day. I know it's a lot. I know it's hard, but that should be your goal and just focus on one or two of your weakest areas each day. And over time you will get better. Now, the plan can be simple, but following that plan every single day is going to take a lot of diligence and discipline. Like I said, I learned that the hard way. I was not good at that. And maybe you're not good at it either, but we can get better, I promise you. And now the next tip, and this is huge, is to watch your thoughts. I have talked about this a lot, especially on our live videos here, because it is something that comes up over and over and over again. All the test anxiety and all— well, just like basically the mental game leading up to your exams, it is a huge problem. So if I had to take the NCLEX all over again, I would definitely do this differently. This is huge. It sounds so simple, but I would watch my thoughts and my test anxiety a lot more and be aware of it more, because a huge part of taking the NCLEX is not just the content that you have to know, it's actually that whole mental game behind it, right? Because you've got that timer right in front of your face, and it's very, very easy to get anxious and worried. You know, you've got that deadline right there, you've got a gazillion things in your brain that you have to prove to them that you actually know. It is a lot of pressure for just one day. So actually, something that I did for all my exams in nursing school, and then again on the NCLEX, was that I actually wrote a Bible verse on the top of the whiteboard that they give to you. So when you go into your testing center, you will be given a whiteboard for your exams, and at the top of that, that's what I just wrote right before the test. They might give you a piece of paper instead of a whiteboard. Some testing centers might be different, it just depends. So I just wrote Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." So I would write Jeremiah 29:11 right, right on my whiteboard. So beautiful. And that just helped me be really more grounded during that exam and not freak out as much as I really wanted to freak out. And a huge part of actually like staying more grounded during the exam and not freaking out is knowing that you're prepared for it, right? So like we've been talking about this whole video, is the more that you prepare, the more confident you're gonna get. And a huge piece of that, a huge piece of that, is knowing how the test works. So click on this video here, and I'm gonna walk you through the absolute must-know prioritization principles so that you can get those tricky NCLEX questions right. And comment the word "think" down below to snag my free critical thinking cheat sheet, or you can grab it in the link below in the description. And of course, if you liked this video, hit that like button, share it with a friend who also needs some more help with nursing school or prepping for the NCLEX, and write "love" down in the comments below because that is just what we do around here on my channel. All of those things really help to tell YouTube to share this video with more nursing students students who need it. And I am on a mission here, my friend, to help as many nursing students as possible pass nursing school and the NCLEX. And as always, my friend, go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will see you over there in that next video.