MAR 15 LIVE SHOW | The Nursing School Show | ASK US ANYTHING!
In this live YouTube session, hosts Christina Rafano and Matthew field real‑time questions from nursing students. They cover practical clinical concerns such as why some programs restrict student IV and catheter placement until competency and program level are verified, and they explain the importance of checking program accreditation. The duo reviews documentation tools, directing viewers to their YouTube channel and membership community for deeper tutorials on SOAP/SOAPIER notes and care‑plan writing. They introduce the Nursing Diagnosis Handbook (Ackley & Ladwig) as the go‑to source for NANDA diagnoses and demonstrate how care‑plan books consolidate these lists. A major portion of the show is devoted to their proprietary “four‑core method” for mastering med‑surg content—pathophysiology, signs & symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions—paired with a three‑step prioritization framework (ABCs, Maslow’s hierarchy, and the nursing process). Throughout, they promote upcoming resources, a large library of videos, and the opening of enrollment for their Nursing SOS membership. The tone is conversational, supportive, and promotional, aiming to give actionable study tactics while encouraging viewers to join their community for more structured guidance.
Chapters
Going live.
Good morning.
You're live. Good morning, everyone.
Hey, look at this. We're here.
Happy Wednesday, everyone.
Happy Wednesday. If you've been following us on Instagram.
Oh, yes.
Everything in our neighborhood is funny. So weird.
It's been an adventure for sure. So Happy Wednesday to those just joining us for the very first time. Time. Hello, we are the Nursing School Show.
Yes, I am Christina.
And I am Matthew. And we are here to answer nursing school questions.
And we always get this question.
I have a test in two hours. Hey, congrats.
People always ask us, who are you? To each other? And still we'll just answer it. Hello, we are married. Someone asked, what was it the other day? Are you. What was it? Are you not related?
Couple.
Are you a couple?
Are we a couple?
Okay, if you're married, are you, you're technically a couple, right? But like, I consider like, couple being.
Like, we are a couple.
Engaged, a couple of people dating. We are a couple of people. Yes. Yes.
All right, well, go ahead and shoot in the comments below any nursing school related questions, comments, anything that you'd like to share with us today. This is Ask Us anything. Ask Me anything. Ask Christina anything. How to write a soap note, please.
Yes, that is a fabulous question.
I take your questions and put them here and then we'll answer them as we go.
And actually, I want to direct you. I think we have a video on it on YouTube. We certainly have things on in our membership community on writing soap notes. Soapy, Soapier.
Soapies.
Yeah, various versions. Yeah, we actually have a whole, a whole lecture on it in our membership community. I think we have one on YouTube. So check it out on YouTube. I mean, I can go over it, but it's kind ofNICE on YouTube because I can like write it out or in that video, like I write it out and you can see all of it.
So go ahead. YouTube.com nursingsos and you can search that out there. Also, if you're not yet subscribe, consider subscribing. Don't consider, just do it. Just subscribe.
Don't consider subscribing.
And that'll be helpful because we go live every Monday and Wednesday and all our lives are on YouTube as well. And all our archives are on YouTube.
Nina's asking about prioritization.
Prioritization.
Good question. Someone asked, why can't we do IVs or catheters as students? You can, so long as you have, like checked it off with your school beforehand. So you have to have like some level of competency before you can do it on a real life person in a real life setting, like clinical setting.
So, so you have clinical checkups, right?
You need a clinical checkup. Yeah, skills checkups. Skills check, you'll call it. Some schools call it. And so that's when you'll check off your iv, check off your skills, and then once you are checked off, then depending on in your program. Okay. Not in your program, you can't. That's so weird to me. I've never heard that before.
Are there simulations? Do you do.
So like you do it in skills lab, but then you're not allowed to do it at clinical. Okay. There is also some schools, I think our school had this too. You did have to not only reach a level of competency with the skill, but also you had to be at a certain level of your program. So like they gave us a whole sheet that like, if you were in fundamentals, you could do this at clinical. If you were in med surg, you could do that. Plus more at clinical. Like you have to advance to your program because like IVs. Sure, anyone can put in, anyone can learn how to put in an iv, but that's very different between learning how to put in an IV and also assess your patient before, during and after. You know, if we're talking about giving medications through IVs, if we're talking about obviously IV fluids or blood transfusions, like, man, that is not like if you're in fundamentals. No, no, no, no, no. You're, you're not going to be able to have that competency where you're able to assess a patient efficient for during and after. So there are those things too. Stephanie, I would probably maybe check with your school because maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's not just like checking off the skill per se like itself, but also like, you know, you have to know the, the content, the, the, the content behind it. You have to know the, everything behind it, like the critical thinking and all that behind it.
Yes.
Do you know anything about the changes in the next gen nclex? Yes, a lot. We know a lot about those changes. We talked about it on Monday. We have, we had a fabulous breakdown on YouTube back in August.
Yeah, YouTube. We had a live back in August about the NGN or the next generation nclex. And we go over the different types of quest questions and all the changes and all the changes and stuff. So be sure to check that out.
Yes. Yep. So we can also. Well, Matthew will write it down. Well, he already wrote it down because it's always a question that we get. Let's see, 70. We can't do it on real patients at the hospital, but we have to practice on dummies and SIM labs until we graduate. It's not allowed for us to do IVs or cat catheters. Yeah. That is so interesting. I've never heard about that before. Stephanie, I'm going to ask you a really random question. Is your program accredited? It's a very important question. I have never heard that before. So that's my first question to you. Is your program accredited? So that is. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. Like, that's almost a red flag to me about a program. I'd be a little concerned and I would definitely talk to your instructors about it. Like, I've literally never heard that before.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Well, go talk to your instructors and let us know what you find out.
Yeah.
RIC in Rhode Island. Okay.
RIC in Rhode Island. Rhode island community.
The only Rhode island one that I know is risd, and that's an art and science institute. So I don't think that's where you're going or you probably shouldn't be going to RISD if you're in nursing school.
That's funny. Yeah. See, I'm not familiar with all the schools or that would be crazy. State. Are you Marfa Jose, you're saying, like State College, Rhode Island College. That, I mean, that sounds.
Sounds like Rhode Island College.
Like, I mean, I would just double check.
Yeah.
Make sure it's accredited.
That's. That's really interesting.
But that is interesting. Mark for Joe's is your school. Do you go to the same school? And okay, everyone else on this live, do you do skills like at clinical? Are there, is there anything that you can't do at clinical?
That's a good question.
I'm gonna ask our members, too.
Okay. Later we'll ask our members and we'll get back to you on that on a future live. So stay tuned.
Yeah, my friend Josie used to go there.
Yeah. Okay. Very cool. All right, well, let's see. From Monday, we were going to talk about med surge.
Okay.
If you guys want to talk about med surge, let us know down in the comments below. We are also going to talk about NANDA diagnosis.
Yes, I want to do that first.
Care plans. Care plans because dosage calculation. Someone wants to talk about dosage calculation.
Let's do it here.
Okay, so we're going to do care plans first, right?
Yes. The first thing I want to show you is this book here. If you don't have it. It's likely required by your school. So many schools require it or something like it. Maybe not exactly this one, but pretty much all schools will require you to buy a care plan book. Now, I highly recommend that you open that care plan right away. So it's so funny because when I started nursing school, like, they give you all the textbooks, and literally, it's like you basically need a hand truck to get it to your car, which is not fun. And then you don't go through them. Right. Because you don't know what these books are. Like, you don't. And you don't want to open them if you don't have to use them. But I highly recommend that you do open your care plane book and at least skim through it, because I did not look at this book until I was probably halfway through my program, and it would have been so helpful when I had started. So it's very, very important that you understand care plans early in your program and that you can do them quickly. The quicker you can get through your care plans, just the better off your life is going to be, because there's so many of them that you have to do for clinical. Like, oftentimes you'll need to do like, three of them for each patient or five of them for each patient that you have at clinical. Like, it's very challenging to get all those done. So seriously, you want to be able to get to the point where you're writing your care plans in, like, 10 minutes. That's it.
While Christina's jamming on this, let us know down in the comments below if you've done any of your care plans yet and, like, what. What term you're in in nursing school and how this relates to you.
Okay. And also what I want to mention. Well, should have mentioned this at the beginning. We have about 3,000 things coming for you guys, if you're interesting SOS member. I mean, there's just, like, we have a ton of resources, videos. I think I recorded, like, I don't know, a couple dozen new videos that we have coming for you very soon, and Care Plans is one of them. We have some really fabulous new resources coming to help you out with care Plans. So stay tuned because you just. They're so. They can be very, very stressful. And we want. We do not want you to stress about them. We're here to hold your hand through all of it and to, you know, obviously help you write them so you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to Figure everything out yourself. Do you have anything to say about that?
No, I think that's good.
Okay, first thing I want to show you is where you find the Nanda nursing diagnoses. Because this is a huge question we get.
That's like the second page.
The second page. So go to your care plan book. It's. It's. You've got a list in your care plan book of all the names and nursing diagnoses. Okay. We always get this question because in your textbooks, like, if you're just going through your fundamentals textbook where you're med surg textbook, they're like scattered all over. There's no like comprehensive condensed list of them in those textbooks. What you want is your care plan book, all right? That's where you're going to find it. The whole list of Nanda nursing diagnoses. Okay? So that's all there. This is the book. Okay. And then as you go through, basically it writes your care plans for you, which is fabulous because it goes through each of the diagnoses. It gives you the patient goals, the nursing interventions, the rationales for those nursing interventions, the. As evidenced by the. Related to like all of the things. So when you think about nano nursing diagnoses, when you think about hair plans, think about this book. Okay. And then follow me on Instagram because. Well, we're going to tell our members first, if you're a nursing Essence member, can chat, watch your emails because we're gonna tell you some fancy things in the coming weeks. But then on Instagram also, I will post them on my story. So when we get those care clean resources out for you, I will tell you because it's, it's gonna be.
Christine is very excited about this.
If you have not about it caught on.
But also, I don't know, I. I find this fascinating and I'm not sure, maybe, maybe nurse of instead students will know this right off the bat. But again, not a nurse. So I'm just going to ask the question as if I don't know, because.
I do not know. Go for it.
The whole idea of Nanda diagnoses or diagnosis is that Nanda, it means it's a standardized. And that's why Christina says that there's a whole list right in front. Like you don't. You don't just make up your own diagnosis. So don't do that if you're doing this.
No, don't make up your own diagnoses. You will fail in your care plan.
Yeah.
Because that's not allowed.
So the, the whole List is in the front. That book.
Can you see this on YouTube? Instagram? You asked what is the name of the nursing care book? It's Nursing Diagnosis Handbook by Akley and LWIG. Oh, YouTube. I hope you can see it. Yep. Can't see. Matthew can see the book, though. Nursing Diagnosis Handbook by Ackley and Ladwig.
And then also on YouTube for all those on YouTube or if you're not go there. The YouTube this week was not about it, but like the past three weeks have been examples of care plans. So if you need more guidance, step by step, go ahead and look at that. It will. Christina literally goes through each of the columns of the care plan and what to put or some examples from how to do it. So, yes, definitely. Check that out.
Yes. Okay. Does the Nursing Diagnosis Handbook help with the SOAP note? I have purchased the book. It totally could. I mean, the thing with like the SOAP note, you use it for documentation. Care plans are technically documentation. I mean, you guys know that, like, when you graduate nursing school, you're never going to see a care plan ever in your life. Like, you know that because, like, charting and stuff. Yes. While you're kind of charting your care plan, you're not like charting it in the call columns. You are basically doing like, you know, that soap note kind of thing depending on, like how your. Your clinical site or your facility charts. So it could be like, you know. Well, I say most things in my world are on epic, you know, for the like, computer charting, electronic charting. And so you do, like, your assessment. Right. So like, the SOAP note is like subjective data, objective data, your assessment, what's your plan? And so you do like, your subjective objective data, what your assessment is kind of. That would be like, here's my assessment, here's what I think. So if you're talking to the doctor, that's like, here's what I think, here's what I want to do, kind of recommendations kind of thing. And then here's the plan. Like, here's what we're going to do. So it's kind of similar to a care plan because you have the assessment and you have the plan plan. But they are not the same.
They're not the same. But even looking clear further, like you mentioned, soap note, do you stop at the P or do you have the soapy soapier as well? Because the I and the E and R kind of.
Yes.
Dovetails more into the care plan, right?
It does. I mean, basically what they're getting at is the nursing process. So the soap, no, soapy, soapier, whatever you want to call it? It's the nursing process, really. We assess. You got your diagnosis. And the care plan too is the nursing process. Right. You. You diagnose your patient. Not a medical diagnosis. The nursing diagnosis. Okay. And then, you know, it's adpy, assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. It's basically the SOAP note or soapier note.
Yeah.
It's confusing with all like the different variations. And some schools use this, some schools use that. You know, what are you going to do? But like SOAP year is, you know, subjective data, objective data, assessment plan, and then like your interventions or implementation. I like to link those two together because they're kind of the same thing. And then evaluation and then like recommendations or like re evaluation. Some schools do it different ways. So check with your school with whatever they want you to use. But that's basically the care plan. You're totally right.
Yep. Which is like you said, which is right too. It's basically the nursing process.
It's all the nursing process.
Yeah, it's all the nursing process. So get that down and you'll be good.
Yes, absolutely. Yes. So we mentioned it before, but I'll mention again, if you're a nursing Assist member, we have full, like video training lectures on documentation and like on patient charting and the SOAP note, SOAP year. That's all included in that. So you could check out the fundamentals course. We have like a whole section on clinical documentation and charting. So if you are confused about that, how to write a narrative note or how to write like all these, like, types of things, definitely check that out. Inside the nursing ESSENCE membership community going to help you so much. Like, you all don't have to be confused about anything because we walk you through all of it.
Definitely.
We got your back.
Okay, next up, next up, let's see. We can either do dosage calculations or med surge.
Oh, let's do med search because that's an older one. And I also want someone asked about prioritization.
Yes.
So I'm going to talk about those two things together. Okay, let's do it. So we call this. So you guys, we have. We have very specific ways of teaching you how to pass nursing school. Like, these are not things you're going to hear other places. Like, we have our very specific and defined frameworks for how to study, and they work nursing SOS frameworks. So this one is called the four core method. All right. Once you remember that, remember the four core method. There's four things that you need to study. Anytime you are studying a disorder, a disease, anything in Nursing school, okay. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions. All right, now we have more things coming on this inside the nursing membership community too, as well, very soon. So if you remember, stay tuned, it's going to be so, so helpful. So that is the four core method, and I'll show you how it works. You start with the pathophysiology. Always. The pathophysiology is really the foundation for everything else that you have to know in nursing school. Nursing school is not about critical thinking as you know, or not about memorization as you know. It's all about critical thinking. You have to know how to critically think in nursing school in order to pass your exams. The problem is, is that textbooks, the your lecture class in school, YouTube videos, you watch, other, whatever things you do online to get help with. With nursing school, like all of them are so focused on memorization, not helpful for you. So we are not here to just give you a list of things to memorize, like a list of signs and symptoms or a list of nursing assessments or whatever that is not helpful for you. What you need is to understand the pathophysiology first and then you can critically think through everything else. So that's why we call it the four core method. There's four core four things that you have to know. Patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions. Okay? It starts with the patho. Pathophysiology is always first. You have to understand what is happening in the body and why and why those signs and symptoms could be created. Why we do the nursing assessments the way we do them, why we do those nursing interventions the way we do them as they relate back to the pathophysiology. So this is exactly how we teach inside our nursing SOS membership community. We connect everything back to the patho. We do the critical thinking for you. We walk you through what you need to know to pass your exams. Like all that critical thinking, that is what we do. So it's called the four core method. Don't forget that. Okay? Do not waste your time in nursing school studying random things about random things. Those are the four key things you have to know, all right? And so that is your basis for med surge. Now let's talk about prioritization. Three principles for prioritization, okay? The ABCs, always, all right? Airway, breathing, circulation. Those are always your number one priority, okay? Safety for your patient, the ABCs. Now, the next one is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is very similar to the ABCs. If you've seen Maslow's hierarchy. It's like a pyramid, right? With the. I don't know what you want to call it. Like the levels. The first level is physiology. You have to make sure your patient's physiological needs are taken care of first. Those are the ABCs. So that's why it's first. Okay, so you've got physiology and then the next one up is safety needs. That's most likely where it's going to end on your exams for you. Sometimes if you're on like a mental health exam, then you'll go into like the. I think the next one is self esteem, love and belonging or love and belonging, self esteem and then self actualization, something like that. But most often you're going to focus on the, the first two bases basically that physio physiological needs of physiology and then the safety needs. So making sure that your patient is safe. Like they don't have their IV cords wrapped around everywhere that their bed is low locked, they have their cold Paul. Like those things, right? So remember those two principles. Now the third principle, like we talked about earlier, is the nursing nursing process, which starts with the nursing assessment. So I want you guys all to remember this for your exams, okay? Remember this, what I'm going to tell you right now. Anytime you are taking a nursing exam, look at the answers. If it's a priority question, like what would you do first? If it's asking you what's your initial action? What would be your initial response? What would be your first response, your first action? Those are phrases you're looking for in the question. Go through the list of answers and make sure that there is nothing to assess for. Before you do anything, before you do any nursing intervention, before you do anything to try to fix the problem, make sure that you assess your patient first. This is so common. So let's say like you have a patient who appears. This is so common. You guys remember this please. When you, if you got a question that says like your patient is having difficulty breathing or like says they're having difficulty breathing, one of the answers could be like give albuterol, give oxygen, da da da da. Tell the doctor, tell the doctor, call the doctor.
I like that answer. It's also never right.
Don't call the doctor unless there is absolutely nothing else you could do. Okay, that's another tip. So if you have a question that's like your patient says that they're having difficulty breathing, oftentimes the answers will be like give oxygen or give a medication or whatever. Make sure that there Is no other option before you actually do an intervention. We're looking for an assessment. What can you do to assess your patient? All right, you need to look at how they're breathing. You need to assess their oxygen levels. Right. You need to just assess their respiratory rate. Right? Here's another big, big one. Giving a medication. Anytime you give a blood pressure medication, cardiac medication, make sure you assess their blood pressure and their heart rate first. All right, so these nursing exam questions are tricky because you want to do something first, right? Like you want to do something right away to fix the problem, but that's not the nursing process. We want to make sure we assess our patient first so we actually know what's going on. Not just this gut reaction. Right. Of, oh, I need to fix something. No, no, no, no. Assess your patient first. Right? Everyone square on that we got.
Good.
I like it. That was really helpful. Sorry, guys. Matthew, he's recovering. So we have not only flooding in our neighborhood, but also everyone's recovering from the sickness.
The sickness. I know this is going around. I think I'm the last one though, so hopefully always. We're almost done.
So healthy. And then, I mean, I was actually really surprised that you even got sick this time because you.
I thought I was gonna get away with it.
Yeah. It went through everyone in the family first.
Okay.
And then it hit Matthew.
Hey, everyone's saying this is helpful, so.
Oh, good.
Awesome. Excellent.
You know, I probably post about it on stories later today.
Yeah, yeah, excellent. So med surge, the core four and prioritization. All the different ways of going through prioritization. And yes, Maslow is right.
Yes, 100% is hierarchy. So I think what we're going to do next Monday, I really like the question that we got on Monday. I study every day and I know the info, but I'm still not getting the exam grades that I want. What can I do? And then also, like, how to prepare and test taking strategies. I really want to go over all of that on Monday.
Okay.
Does that sound good?
Yep, we can do that on Monday.
And you guys, I want to mention. Okay, well, I mentioned it a little earlier, but we have about 15,000 things coming for you inside the nursing houses membership community. It's going to blow your mind. So you remember, stay tuned, keep an eye on your emails, Keep an eye on my Instagram. Man, I am so excited. We have been very hush hush about so much for months and so we just have, like so much coming for you. And also the membership community is open, what, in a week and a half.
Yeah, it's coming up. So definitely, if you're not a member, go ahead and go to nursingschoolofskest.com join.
Or the link is in my bio.
On Instagram, there is a VIP list. You can join and be the first to know when it opens so you can be part of the changes and all the additions that we're adding to it.
Yes.
One of the things that we talked about on this live is actually one of them. It's our. Our frameworks and putting names to them and making sure that you guys know. So core.
And a whole bunch of care plans.
And a bunch of care plans. So, yeah, we actually talked about a couple things coming down the pipeline.
The 26th enrollment will open on the 26th. Save the date. You're not going to want to miss it. It's gonna be so, so great. Like, all the resources we have coming for you. Oh, you're gonna love it. All right, my friends, we will see you on Monday.
All right, take care, everyone.
And then we'll answer these, like, study strategy questions. We have a list, so, yeah, fabulous. All right, friends, we will see you on.
So many diseases. Couldn't remember every pathos, signs, symptoms. Could you give me some tactics?
Yes. Go back and watch this live because we talked all about it.
Yeah. So definitely. It's just the high level. It's like building a building. So you need a good foundation, and the foundation is a pathos. So understanding what the body is doing and what it's supposed to be doing and not doing. Right. That'll help you critically think.
Okay, that's the thing, you guys. When you go and watch a random YouTube video, when you go look at your textbook, notice this. This week, it's all lists. They just want you to memorize a list of signs and symptoms. Not helpful for you. Like, that's all I give you is a list of signs and symptoms and nursing assessments and nursing interventions. Not helpful for you. You have to know the patho first and how it connects back. So understand what is actually happening in the body. Connect those signs and symptoms back to that path. That's everything we do inside our community for you. Like, that's. That's everything we do all the critical thinking for you. That is how we teach. That's why the four core method works so well, because it's all about critical thinking.
It's all about critical thinking. All about making that leap that everything is related to. Everything connects together and understanding how one point connects to another. So you can make a net or make it all fit together in your mind because your mind likes to think.
That way we like to make connections.
In connections and how things are related so if you're just going to try and memorize lists that's not going to be helpful for your brain so help your brain out do a favor to your brain and really going to fail you on your exam for that relations and just understand okay well this path okay this is going wrong in this body well why or and and that's really it asking the why questions and.
How it links together yes 100% awesome. All right friends we will see you on Monday same time, same place.
Talk to you guys later.
Have a great day. Follow me on Instagram stories because our house might flood today and that will.
Be fun to watch for you guys not so much for us but that wouldn't be fun but I'll follow and she'll keep you posted.
Okay bye.
Take care.
See you later.
