How to Pass Medical Surgical Nursing (TOP TIPS for Passing Med Surg)

In this video, I am showing you how to pass your Med surg classes in nursing school the easy way. I'll give you the step by step breakdown for how to study smarter, not harder, so you can pass nursing school. Now hit the subscribe button and click the notification bell and let's dive in. Now, full disclosure. There are a bunch of trucks outside, so I'm going to try to talk loud so that I can talk over the truck. So I hope it doesn't bug this video too much. Our neighbors are cutting a tree down next door. It's getting a little loud. Med Surg nursing is one of the hardest topics to learn in nursing school. There are so many different diseases and disorders to know and it's so difficult to figure out what information is important and what information isn't. You don't want to waste your time studying the wrong things that aren't going to be on your exams. There are so many mistakes that I see nursing students make, like reading every word in the textbook and then not connecting the dots and learning how to critically think. Think. I'm going to spill all of the beans today and give you the secret on what you actually need to study in med surg and what you don't and then how to critically think along the way. And this whole process starts by learning how to take amazing notes in class. Because without good notes, your studying will just totally fall apart. You need good notes that you can study effectively. So here's the step by step process for how to do that. The first step is to print off all of your PowerPoints and outlines and study guides and modules and basically anything that your professors give you, print it all off and organize it before class. And here's a little bonus tip for you. When I printed off my PowerPoints, I liked to change the printer settings so that it would print three slides with a note section next to it. That way it gave me some room to write notes during class. So, so that's why I really recommend is that you just print out your PowerPoint slides this way. So you have three slides on one side and then over here you have a note section like the line section so that you can write down your in class notes. And that's where I would write down my in class notes was right on that side. And it just keeps everything so organized and really, really handy. I also like to have different binders for each of my different classes, like Med Surg 1 Skill, Skills Lab and Clinical. All the classes I was taking, this just really helped me to keep everything Organized really nicely. So put all of those papers that you just printed off into the appropriate binder. So I wanted to show you really quick kind of how I organized my binder system. Like I said, I really, really recommend that you have a separate binder for each class. That way, if you don't have like clinical one day, then you don't need to take your clinical binder if you don't want to carry more than you need. Same thing with like lecture. If you don't have lecture one day, then you don't have to take your lecture binder. So, so here are kind of all my. Some of my binders that I pulled out. This one is dose cow. You can see that this one was med surg. I've got another. This was clinical. Another clinical one. So kind of just pulled. And yes, I'm in sweatpants because, well, it's Monday and it's raining outside. So no judgment. Now, during class, you have two choices. You can take notes directly onto your PowerPoint slides like I did, or you can take notes on a side separate piece of paper or a separate notebook. If your professor doesn't teach off a PowerPoint, you'll need to take notes on a separate notebook. So this is step number two. Decide how you want to take notes in class and then follow through with it. Are you going to take notes in a separate notebook or directly on your slides or your study aids that your professor gave you? When I took notes on the PowerPoint slides, I liked to write all of my class notes on that note section next to the slides as much as possible. That left me a lot of room to take notes from the textbook all around the edges of the paper. We'll get to that strategy in a minute. But that's how I did that. So in class, I would try to keep my notes condensed to the lined area as much as possible. And then once class is over, you can go home and find the places in the textbook that correspond to the topics that your professor talked about in class. I have talked about this strategy a lot here on this channel because it's one of the best, best study strategies to use in nursing school. Focus on studying the things that your professors talk about in class. Do not worry about reading every single thing in the book. That's a huge waste of time. You'll never actually have time to learn it. You'll just spend all your time reading. It's important to learn how to focus. And the best thing to focus on that I have found, are the topics that your professors talked about in class because those are the ones that are most likely to show up on your exams. Now, if your professor doesn't lecture during class, or if you spend class just going over case scenario questions, don't worry, friend. I have the answer for you on how to study. Stay with me. We will get there in just a minute. So step number three is to find the places in the textbook that correspond to what you just learned in class, and then take notes from the textbook onto the same note pages that you used in class. This just keeps all of your notes organized and in one place so you're not flipping between different notebooks trying to find information in your notes. I like to keep all of my class notes and textbook notes in all the same place. And you can see around my notes section here, up at the top. Like around here, I have my textbook notes. So that's where I would write my textbook notes. So here on the line section, I would write my in class notes. And then when I got home and read those sections of the book that we covered in class, then I would write those notes around the edges. That way I knew where my notes came from. So I knew that everything written on these line sections here was from class. And then everything around the edges or like on the backs of them would be for my textbook. It's just a really, really good way to keep everything organized. And then this way, when it came to finals time, I didn't have to reopen my textbook because all of my notes were in one place. All I had to do was just study this. So that's why I leave room around the edges of those Note pages, the PowerPoints. I wanted to make sure that I would have enough room to write down all of my textbook. Not. And here's another pro tip for you. Write the page numbers from the textbook next to where you wrote your notes so that you know what page they came from. That way, when you're studying for your exam, you don't need to search back through the textbook. You can just quickly flip to the right page because you wrote down the page number that you got it from. It just keeps everything so much more organized. Then I would write the page numbers just on the top of the slides there. You can see here page numbers just down on each top of the slide. So that way I knew where I got that information from the textbook or where that section was in the textbook just in case I had to break that textbook open again. Oftentimes I didn't. But just in case, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't like searching and through all of my textbooks trying to figure out where that information was. I could just look at that page number there and there it was for me. Super easy peasy. Just makes coming when you start coming up to finals time just makes it so much easier and way less stressful when you have everything organized and in one place. Now in just a minute I'm going to tell you exactly what to focus your study time on after you take all of those notes. And I'm also going to give you a breakdown of how to critically think and connect all of the dots about it. So hold on tight. You are going to be a Med Surg Pro after this video. So those are the three steps for how to take efficient notes in class. Print everything off. Take your in class notes either on a separate notebook or on a PowerPoint or module. And then when you get home, focus on reading the sections of the book that your professor talked about in class or outlined in the modules or the study aids. This will really help you on focus focus your study time and help you be super efficient. Now a common question that I get from students is Christina, my professors don't actually teach us anything. What am I supposed to do then? Well friend, don't worry for one more second because here's the secret about Med Surg that nobody tells you. There are four main things that you need to focus on in your Med Surg Nursing classes, pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. That's it. End of story. So if your professor doesn't lecture during class, or if you don't really learn anything, or if you're just going through a lot of case scenario questions, then here's what you're going to do. Take the topics of your case scenarios, the modules, the syllabus, or other study material that your school gave you. Grab a notebook and then you're going to go through each med search disorder one by one and write down these four things. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. Then go through your textbook and write down those answers for each one of those categories. So for Med surgical disorder number one, let's say that it's heart failure. You'll write down the pathophysiology of heart failure. Then you'll write down the signs and symptoms and what you will assess for and then the nursing interventions that you'll need to do. Now I have a free nursing school study checklist that walks you through this process step by step. Make sure to download it after watching this video. Because friend, it is game changing. If you don't have it. I just don't even know what you're doing with life. So stinking good. It's going to save you so much time studying in nursing school, so make sure to get it after this video. The link is down below in the description. Med search is really that simple. That's all you need to know are those four things. Of course, you'll also need to be able to critically think through it all as well, and I'm going to walk you through how to do that step by step in just a minute. So as you're studying, make sure that you're focusing on learning those four main categories, the patho, the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment and the nursing interventions and you will be golden my friend. Now as you know, nursing school is all about critical thinking, but the problem is that no one tells you exactly what that means. They just expect you to figure it out on your own. That always makes really bugged me because I would always second guess myself and make it way more complicated than it should have been. So I am here to take that pain away from you and make it super easy. I created a critical thinking model that you can follow as you study in nursing school. It took me a long time to discover this, but when I did it was absolutely life changing. So I wanted to give it to you so that you can use it as well to help take some of the stress out of nursing school and learning how to critically think. But before we dive into our critical thinking model, I want to give a shout out to shelby for our YouTube comment of the week. This is probably one of my favorite comments ever Shelby. So thank you love at times a million. I really just appreciate how many exclamation marks there are at the end of that. If you've ever gotten an email or a DM from me, you know how much that I love my exclamation marks. I'm just so excited all the time. So Shelby, thanks so much for your short and sweet comment. It made me really happy. And keep those comments coming. They really help me to know what videos you like the most, what topics you want to see more of, and how I can help you the best through nursing school. So thanks so much for commenting on all of our videos. Keep it up because it really helps me out. Now let's dive into the critical thinking model. Now your ability to critically think in nursing school can be the difference between getting an A in your med surg class or getting A C. So it's super important that you know this stuff. So let's walk through the critical thinking model together. The critical thinking model for nursing school goes like this. Drc The D stands for definition or description. The R stands for reason or rationale, and the C stands for connection. So here's what you'll do. For each med surg topic you're learning about, you're going to write down these three things. DRC under the D category you'll write what it is, what's the description of it, what is it exactly, what's the definition? This is the high level part here. You're just giving an overview of what it is and what's going on with it. So for example, if you're studying left sided heart failure, you would write down something like the heart can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. That's that high level overview of what's happening during left sided heart failure. The heart just cannot pump enough blood out to meet the body's needs. So that's the D. What is it? What's the description? What's the definition? Now the R is where you start to dig a little deeper. This stands for reasoning or rationale. Under this category you'll write down why it happens, what's the reason for it, why does it matter? Why does it happen? So for our left sided heart failure example, this would go back to the pathophysiology. Why does left sided heart failure happen and why does it matter? So you might write something like it happens because the heart is injured and it matters because it causes decreased cardiac output and then reduces blood flow to the rest of the body, causing the organs to get less blood, oxygen and nutrients. This is the reasoning behind why it happens. What's the pathophysiology of left sided heart failure, why does it happen and why does it matter? Now I really want you to dig deep and focus on the underlying reason, reason or cause. Med surge nursing is all about studying the different disorders and you need to know why they happen and what the effects are. So that's what you'll do here in this R category. What's the reason for why it happens and why does it matter? Now step number three is where you really start to critically think and connect all the dots. That's the C part connection. In this category you'll ask yourself how it connects to everything else that you're learning about. So for your med search class, you'll want to include the signs and symptoms you would expect to see in A patient, what you would need to assess for and then what interventions you'll need to do. Keeping with our heart failure example, you could write something like it reduces blood flow to the kidneys because the heart just can't pump enough blood out, which may lead to a decrease in urine output. It could cause fluid to back up into the lungs and the body because the blood can't go further forward like it should. So it needs to go somewhere. So it backs up into the system, backs up in the lungs and the body. And this could lead to pulmonary edema, congestion. So you might hear crackles in the lungs. And you'll also need to assess for weight and level of edema and urine output because of those things. Add as much detail as you like here. The more you can connect these concepts together, the better off you're going to be for your exam. The critical thinking model is going to help you soar in nursing school. If you use that to study, you will be so amazed at how well you understand all of the Med Surg disorders. And then of course, you'll do so much better on your exams because of it. So for every med surg topic you're learning about in nursing school, you can use this critical thinking model to help you connect the dots with it and really deepen your understanding. Now, the next major tip that I want to give you for how to study in Med Surg is, is how to learn all of the medications you're going to give for each of these disorders. I wanted to mention this one here because I've gotten so many questions about it from our nursing SOS members and from our students over on Instagram. So many students have told me, christina, I am in Med Surg now and I feel like I should know more than I do already. I'm just not connecting the dots and things just are not coming together like they should be. I hear this all the time. So the first thing I want to say about this is to drop your expectations. You are exactly where you need to be with the exact knowledge that you should have. Don't compare yourself to other students or some version of yourself that you made up in your own mind. As long as you're working hard and doing the best that you can, that's all you can do. Friend. Give yourself a break and don't be so hard on yourself. You are exactly where you need to be. Now here's the best news. You are going to learn so much as you go. Med surg is just the beginning, my friend. Every week your brain is going to explode with new information and every time you go to clinical, you're going to be putting the puzzle pieces together more and more. It just takes time, but every day you will get better. So when students ask me how to learn all those medications for their med surg class, I tell them two things. Of course you should jump into the nursing SOS membership community and go through our whole how to study pharmacology course because, well, it's pretty amazing. In that course I walk you through step by step how to study pharm in nursing school. The second thing I tell them is to learn your medications as you go and as you take care of your patients who are taking those medications meds, that's the best way to learn them is to actually care for patients who are on those medications. So when you get your patient assignment at clinical, study all of your patients medications and make sure that you know everything about those meds, like what it's for, what the side effects are, what you need to assess for and how to give it safely. All of those things. The more you take care of patients with different medications, then the more meds you're going to learn. I also really recommend writing out med cards over and over again. The repetition of writing out all that information will help it all come together faster. That's why I loved flashcards and whiteboards in nursing school. They were a huge asset to me because just the act of writing things out again and again really helped me to commit it all to memory. So for each medication that your patients have, write out all of the information that you need to know about it and do this for every patient you have. Now the nice part is that many of your patients will likely have the same or similar medications, so you'll be able to learn them all faster this way just by writing all of it out for each patient. I'll walk you through the easiest way to create med cards in the next video in this series. So be sure to watch that video and don't forget to snag your free nursing school study checklist. The link is down below in the description. Now click on one of these videos right over here so you can keep rocking nursing school my friend, and go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will catch you in the next video. Take care.