How to Study Pathophysiology in Nursing School

In this video we're going to talk about how to study pathophysiology in nursing school. This is such an important topic because the pathophysiology is the foundation for everything else that you need to know about in nursing school, like fluids and electrolytes, cardiac disorders, respiratory disorders, endocrine disorders, all of the things pathophysiology is so, so key to understand and so important. So let's talk about how to learn it easier and how to learn it faster. Let's dive in. So I have so excited to start bringing you more pathophysiology videos and more med surg videos to help you through nursing school. We're currently in a pathophysiology series that we're posting videos about here on YouTube. I'm so, so excited for that. But I really wanted to do just a whole video on really how to study pathophysiology and make it easier. I feel like a lot of nursing students look at their textbooks or videos online and they try to learn pathophysiology in such a complicated and over complex. It's just not helpful. So I have some really great tips here in this video that we're going to talk about to help make it easier so you can learn it faster. I truly believe that nursing school does not have to be as complicated as most of us make it out to be, including myself. Like going through nursing school, I wanted to know everything about everything about everything. But that is just not how it works. You really have to focus on the key things that you're actually going to be tested on, the key things that actually matter. At clinical, if you try to know everything about everything, you are really going to risk your grade on your exams because that's just not how nursing school works. You really have to study more efficiently, more effectively in order to pass. And so a lot of this comes down to pathophysiology and critical thinking. So why is pathophysiology so important? Well, like I said, it's the foundation for everything else you have to know. If you don't understand the pathophysiology for a med surg disorder or for a fluids and electrolytes issue like hypokalemia or hyperkalemia or hyponatremia. You have to understand the path of first. If you don't, then you will not be able to critically think through everything else you have to know for that particular disorder, like the signs and symptoms and the nursing assessments you're going to need to do. If you are just memorizing things like a list of signs and symptoms or a list of nursing interventions, you are really going to struggle on your nursing school exam. So so much of it comes down to the patho. You have to understand the patho first and then you can critically think through everything else you have to know, like the signs and symptoms and the NURS nursing assessment. So connect it all back to the pathophysiology. Why do the signs and symptoms happen? Why are those nursing assessments important? Why do they relate and how do they relate to that pathophysiology? Once you know the path though, you can critically think through everything else. It is such a fabulous, beautiful system. And it's actually this is the exact way that we teach you inside the nursing SOS membership community. So literally, we walk you through the patho for everything that you have to know in nursing school, all the topics you're studying with med surg disorders, critical care disorders, pediatric disorders, labor and delivery. We seriously walk you through the pathophysiology for everything you have to know about in nursing school. And then we connect it all back to the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessments, the nursing interventions. We do the critical thinking for you. We walk you through all the critical thinking behind everything. It all starts with the patho. So let's talk about how to learn it easier. So there's two major resources that I recommend that you have in nursing school. I recommend that you have a high level overview textbook or resource for pathophysiology. And I recommend that you have more of a deep dive on pathophysiology. So here's what I mean by that. A high level overview will walk you through very, very high level in general words, general terms, what is happening with a particular disorder. So that's a high level overview. I love pathophysiology made incredibly easy book. Actually. Let me grab it here for you. Where is it? Oh, I think it's over here. So this is the pathophysiology made incredibly easy book. So this is a really great breakdown of pathophysiology in general terms so that you can really understand overall what is happening with a disorder. For the pathophysiology. Now that is step number one for nursing school. You do have to go a little bit deeper. Oftentimes, especially when you're writing care plans or when you're writing a research paper, you do need to go a little bit deeper than what this book will give you, which is where I recommend something like the Merck manual. This will give you pathophysiology in Deeper terms than the made incredibly easy series book will. So the Merck manual goes into like the chemical level of things and the cellular level of things for pathophysiology. So you do need both, depending on what you're studying in nursing school. Now the beautiful thing is that if you are a nursing SOS member, you do not need these textbooks. We walk you through the patho, we give you a high level overview, and then we walk you through the deeper things as well so that you do get both of those. We give you a very easy breakdown of pathophysiology so you can actually understand it easier. But it is important to have both. You do need that general overview of what's actually happening with pathophysiology so you can understand it in more general terms. But then you also do need that deep dive where it does go through what is happening at the cellular or the chemical level. You do need that oftentimes as well in nursing school. So both of them are important. Now, one of the biggest tips that I have for you for pathophysiology is as you are reading these textbooks or as you are studying pathophysiology or watching a YouTube video about it, make sure that you are breaking down pathophysiology step by step, that you're thinking to yourself, okay, here's what happens first, here's what happens next, and then third, and then fourth. I really, really, really recommend it this way. And I love step by step processes because it just helps you see things of visualize things in a sequential order so you can remember it easier. Like it just breaks it down in a very consumable way so that you can remember it easier and remember it faster. It is so much better, I think, to break a complex topic like pathophysiology down into step by step processes instead of just saying, well, here's kind of what happens like, like what happens oftentimes in textbooks. So I really recommend that while you are reading whatever textbook you have for nursing school, or if you're watching a YouTube video on pathophysiology or whatever, try to be thinking to yourself, okay, what is happening first in this pathophysiology? What is happening next and the next and next, so you can kind of see the sequential order of like, what is actually happening step by step. Now this is exactly how we teach in all of our patho videos on YouTube and inside our Nursing SOS membership community. We always teach patho in this way for this reason, because it's just so much easier to know and Remember and understand. I really, like I said, I love step by step processes. I think that it really just helps you to remember things faster and easier. Which is exactly what we want to do in nursing school, right? Like, you have a life and you want to have a life in nursing school. You do not want to spend 247 reading a textbook or trying to learn everything for your exam. Like, you want to do other things, right? And you want to be an amazing nurse. There is no reason that you need to be studying 247 and being stressed and overwhelmed and confused in nursing school. That is absolutely not what needs to happen. So that is why we have our nursing SOS membership community for you. We have all these patho videos where we break it down for you step by step so you can actually understand it. So as you are studying pathophysiology, I really recommend that you get out like a piece of paper and a pen, literally, and write out step one, step two, step three, step four, and walk through, okay? What are the steps of the pathophysiology? Like, what is actually happening in the body? And if you need an example of this and you're not a nursing SOS member, that's totally fine. Click on these videos here. Watch the patho videos on our channel. We have a whole series on them for you, a whole playlist that will show you how this process works and how much easier it is to learn patho in this way. And go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will see you in that next video.