How to Answer NCLEX® Style Questions Correctly | SATA & Priority Question Breakdown!

In this video, we're walking through how to choose the most correct answer on NCLEX practice questions. I will give you several practical tips that you can apply right now to help you get these tricky questions right. Let's dive in. Now. There are a few key things that you can do when you are going through NCLEX practice questions to help make choosing the correct answer much easier. These are rules for nursing school questions and the NCLEX that you cannot break, my friend, or you will most likely get the question question wrong. Rule number one, don't over analyze the question. Read the questions and take it for what it is. All the information you need is in the question. So if you don't understand it at first, read it again and again. There were many times in nursing school where I would get to a question and not think that it had all the info I needed. But it did. I just didn't see it. So remember, they're giving you all the info that you need. So if you don't think think that they are, you're missing something, my friend. Read it again. Now. Rule number two. Whatever you do, don't draw on prior real life experiences. Treat each question like it is a textbook case. Now what do I mean by that? The patient has the perfect signs and symptoms and they do not, unless it specifically says so in the question, have any comorbidities, anything else going on with them. Forget about all your past experience, your work experience, your personal experience, your clinical experience and your experience as as a parent if you have children. Forget all of it and take the question at face value. Nclex questions are textbook cases. It is not real life as much as they want it to be. So if you draw on your real life experience, you will really struggle to pick the right answer. Never make an assumption that something is true if it is not written in the question. Okay, so treat each question, every question, like it is a textbook case of that one disorder or disease or whatever the patient's going through. Now rule number three. Answer each question as if you have unlimited time and resources. So as you are working through your questions, act as if you have all the time in the world to care for this one patient the textbook way and you have access to as many resources as you need. This is NCLEX world, my friend, not the real world. So be sure as you are going through nclex questions you are focusing on, not over analyzing the questions, not reading into it and thinking. Think in NCLEX world context that you have unlimited time and resources to take care of this one patient. If you break any of these rules, you will probably get the question wrong. So don't do that. Stick with the rules. They will help you pass. Now I'll let you in on a little secret. And most nursing students don't know this, but there are really some great tricks that you can use to get NCLEX questions in nursing exam questions right, even if you don't know what the correct answer is. Now, the secret is nursing exam questions follow a particular structure. It's not random. How they ask questions and how they present the information. There's a strategy behind it. And when you recognize the patterns and know the strategy, it becomes a lot easier to figure out what they're getting at and what the correct answer is. Now, the best two tips for the most common types of questions that we hear about from nursing students all of the time. Those select all that applies static questions and priority questions. These tend to be very popular and they're the more challenging NCLEX style questions to answer. The good news though for you, my friend, on the next gen nclex, you will get partial credit for SATA questions, which is so awesome. So if you pick some of the right answers but not all of them, you'll still be given partial credit. Now don't go thinking that you can choose all of the answers in a static question and call it a day. Does not work that way. Okay? They use what is called plus minus scoring, which means that you will get one point for correct answers, but you'll actually lose points for incorrect answers. So you do want to make sure that you are vigilant and you're critically thinking through the questions and doing your best to answer them correctly. So NCLEX tip number five when you select all that apply questions, go through each answer individually as if you were answering it as a true or false question. This is the best strategy I found to help with this. Look at each answer individually and treat it as a true or false thing question. Read the question again and then look at the first answer and ask yourself is it true or false? As it relates to that question that's being asked and then decide if it's correct or not. You must treat each answer individually. For SATA questions, some answers might be very similar and that's okay. You can select both of them if you think that they are both correct even though they are very similar to each other. With SATA questions, all of the answers should be treated individually and you should not compare them with any of the other answers. Now, NCLEX Question tip number six is all about how to answer priority questions correctly. These are the ones where they ask you what your first or your best or your most important or your initial responses. Your priority response would be the key here is to prioritize, my friend. You want to do the most important thing first. And there are three principles that you should always consider when answering prioritization questions in nursing school. The first one is the ABCs always meaning airway, breathing and circulation. Always use the ABC principle first. Make sure the patient has a clear airway. That should be your top priority. Followed by helping them breathe and keeping their blood circulating. So if you go and do a nursing exam question, one of those things is not happening. Alarm bells should be going off in your head that the problem is the one that you will need to solve for first. Think about the ABCs first. Now the second principle that you should think about is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In this principle, physiological needs come first, like the ABCs that we just talked about. And then this is followed by safety needs like there's no IV line on the floor, that's a tripping hazard and their bed is in the lowest position. Safety, things like that. And then the need to belong, self esteem, esteem needs, and then finally self actualization. Obviously you are going to be more worried about if your patient is breathing rather than worried about if they're feeling loved or not, right? So keep this principle in mind as you answer nursing exam questions. And the last principle that you should consider when answering priority questions is the nursing process. The nursing process follows these steps. Assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Now the key here that nursing exams love to trick you up on is that you should always assess your patient first before you do any nursing intervention. So make sure that before you give a medication, before you do a treatment, before you start an iv, that you always assess your patient first. Nursing exams love to get you on this one, so watch out for it. When you come across a priority question, look for an answer that talks about assess assessing the patient, meaning checking their vital signs or listening to their lungs, things like that. Of course though, balance this with the ABCs and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I've seen many NCLEX style questions that have an answer about assessment where the actual answer for that question had something to do with establishing an airway or keeping their blood circulating. So you've got to balance these things. Keep these three tips in mind when it comes to answering priority questions. Your nursing school exams and there is one key that you need to know about. If you are stressing about your exams in nursing school and worried about passing, you have to know what to focus your study time on so you don't burn yourself out and end up failing that exam. So in this video, I'm going to walk you through how to study less but more efficiently so that you can go into your exams feeling prepared and confident and go become the nurse that God created only you to be my friend. And I will see you over there in that next video.