Nursing School - ASK ME ANYTHING

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Happy Monday.

Happy Monday. Welcome to the Nursing school show, Ask Me Anything edition, featuring Christina and Matthew.

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And all of you wonderful people who hang out with us.

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Hello. End of the month as well. Last day, Last day of the month. Last day of the month. Today, the 31st. Baskin Robin days. Yes.

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31St of every month. There's a deal going on in Baskin Robbins, just FYI.

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We have it marked on our calendar every 31st day.

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Because who doesn't like some ice cream on a Monday? Welcome, friends.

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Post your questions in the chat.

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Hey, Facebook, can you give us some comments, please, so we can test to see if that's working? Because you just never know. It's hit or miss with the Facebooks.

With the Facebooks. Yeah. So welcome to the ama. We will answer as many questions as we can that will be helpful for all. All y'. All.

All y'. All.

All y'. All. We do answer members questions first. They have a form that they can go to the membership site and our membership community and ask questions. We'll hit those first, but after that, go ahead and shoot any questions, comments, whatever, in the comments below and we will answer them.

Yep.

So definitely do that.

Let's do it.

All right, time to get going. So we actually have a first question.

I will paraphrase. So this is an assignment question that one of our members asked. She just needs help with figuring out what to do in a patient situation. So her patient situation is basically, she has a older female patient who was admitted three days ago for a fractured head, hip, and she had the surgical repair yesterday. Medical history. I can't read the question, sorry. Medical history was hypertension, hysterectomy, osteoporosis. She is A and O times four. One, two, three. Oh, she said three alert. Nor ended the person, place and time. Either. I'm wondering if it was actually left off this whole situation, if it was up. I'm assuming. I'm assuming. But maybe not. It says alert and oriented to person, place and time. It does not say situation. So there you go. Daughter's there with her. What's the focus assessment that you would do? Let's open it up, friends. Hey, Olivia, thanks for hanging out with us on Facebook and I'm glad Facebook comments are working. Hey, great Facebook. So what do you guys think? Hi, people on YouTube, elderly female admitted for fractured hip. Surgical repair was yesterday. History of hypertension, hysterectomy and osteoporosis. She is A and O times three person, place and time. It does not say situation. It leaves. That leaves that out. So now I'm wondering if. I'm wondering, I don't know, maybe it was just a poorly written question or maybe they left it out intentionally. You never know. Doctor is at the bedside. Doctor daughter is at the bedside. What's your focus assessment? So, okay, so here's my thing now. I'm actually reading this a little differently because it is say A and O times three, not four. So you would absolutely want to check mental status. If she's alert and oriented to person, place and time, most likely she's also oriented the situation, I imagine, you know, but I'd still assess mental status, ask her about the situation, how did she get here, what's going on. But the biggest thing, circulation, motor function, sensory. Cms, circulation, motor function, sensory. So with anything fracture, anything that's like musculoskeletal, something like this example. This is a patient assignment. This is not a real scenario. It is a case study. It looks like super fun. That one of our members submitted, if you're just joining us. So we're going through it. So cms, circulation, motor and then sensory. So those are the things that you would want to. That's, that's really the most likely what they're looking for. The focus assessment. And then, you know, anything neuromuscular. Just make sure that, you know, you, she's got good circulation to that extremity. What is it? It's the right hip. So you would assess the right leg, you know, make sure that she's got circulation down to her feet. Pulses are there feeling in her feet and her toes. She can move her toes, wiggle her toes, you know, those things, those kind of things definitely check out with anything that's like surgical repair. Check out the wound, make sure. So this is three days post op, right? Oh, no, she was admitted three days ago. The surgical repair was yesterday. She's only one day. So definitely check out the wound. Always check out the one, make sure that it's not getting infected, that it looks good, you know, you know, there's nothing weirdness going on with it or anything. Yeah. And then vital signs. Make sure that she is not. Infection is just huge. Infection is huge. So make sure that you are continuing to assess the vital signs and watch, watch particularly blood pressure, heart rate and fever to watch for sepsis. So that would Be my answer to this assignment question.

Okay, so that last part there. I know I have to assess the musculoskeletal system, but do I assess everything in just the lower extremities? So what we were going through is it's not just the lower extremities.

It's.

There is a lot of kind of.

Tangent stuff to definitely look out for. Yeah, anything. I mean, anything surgical. Anything post op. You absolutely. I mean, especially when there's like a wound involved. Yeah, you should always be. And especially test questions. Like, if you have a test question that asks you about, like a wound or an incision or like wound care or something like that, you absolutely should be assessing for sepsis. So your instructors, you know, they want to go to like, worst case scenario. Right. Like, sepsis would be that. So you want to make sure that the patient, you know, isn't getting an infection at the wound site or in the blood. So, yeah, that's why we do that. But yeah, musculoskeletal neuromuscular system, for sure. And I am curious, though, if you are on nursing, SOS member who submitted this question, I will not say your name. If you are on. Can you tell me after you, you know, submit your assignment and things, if your instructor intentionally left out the A&OT situation? I'm super curious about that.

So usually, again, nursing adjacent. Not. Not nurse.

She's not a nurse.

Questioned the A and O and oriented.

Is A and O alert and oriented four. Right.

And so situation is kind of at the top. Like, usually if they know their situation, they know other things. Or can. Can you judge that way? Or is it really all independent?

I don't. I mean, you know, it's usually. I mean, usually if. Usually if a person is oriented to person, place and time, like they know who they are, they know where they are, they know what day it is. Typically they're going to be. I mean, I would imagine typically they would be oriented situation as well, you know, but I'd imagine, you know, you get into some. I'm assuming that, you know, you get into some mental health floors and things like that, and that's not going to be necessarily the case. Sure. So, yeah, it's person, place, time and orient and situation A and O times four, then if you. If they're not oriented to person, then you decrease it. You know, A and O times three, if they're oriented to the other ones. That's how it goes. Okay. Yep.

All right, cool.

There's that.

Awesome.

Well, I think that was helpful.

Yeah. Hopefully if you guys have any more questions revolving around that case study, that's.

A really interesting one.

Or answers too. If you have any more input, go ahead, pop them in the question.

Do it, do it, do it.

Pop it in the comments. So we have another question for a member, but just real quick, someone else asked on Instagram, I believe it was, and just wanted to address this real quick. They really asked real quickly. Is membership still open?

It is closed.

So we did close membership on Friday right at 4pm Pacific like we said we were going to. So right now the membership community is closed. Go ahead and join the wait list and you will be notified the next time it opens up. So if you still go to nursing schoolsuccess.com join it will go to a place where you can enter your email address and get joined to the wait list. And next time it opens up, you will be the first to know. Hooray. All right, next question from our member. And this one, we again want to open it up to you guys. You guys, we want more opinions, more thoughts.

Yep.

I do not know anything about what I'm saying. These are just words that are coming out of my mouth. So I will leave it to everyone else to translate. So Tips to succeed on the NR103 and in parentheses transition to the Nursing profession course. So I will caveat this that that sounds pretty specific to a school. So I'm not sure if all schools do this or if if this is a something that's specific to this one school and are 103 is very specific. It may be something different for you guys, different numbering. But yes, is there any tips to succeed in this nursing profession course? Sounds like.

So we get this a lot like students ask us how do I succeed in and you know, Med surge 5. Like that doesn't really mean anything to me other than that's most likely advanced med surge because like the numbering is different between all the schools. Like your med surg five might have been my med surg two. You see what I'm saying? So it's like, hey, how can I succeed in like nursing, you know, 110 like my nursing 110 class. And that doesn't. I mean I can't help you because I don't know what nursing 110 means to your school because it's all very school specific. So nursing 110 for you might be med surg where for another program it's fundamentals. So it's very, very different. So make sure that if you ever ask us a question that you do do that. Kind of parentheses, like, this is the actual course I'm taking. So if you tell us like, hey, how do I succeed in like nursing 120, just like let us know. This is my first med surg term. Does that make sense? Or this is like my advancement search, things like that. So when I read this question, transition to nursing profession course. That's so cool. I didn't even know they had a transition to nursing profession course. So to be honest, I don't even have any answers for you because I didn't even know that was a thing. I've literally never heard of that before. Which is pretty cool that your school has that. But I have no idea what that looks like. So I'm wondering this. The question came from a nursing SOS member. If you are on right now and I will probably follow up with you later. Is it. So I think it could go kind of both ways. Like transition to nursing profession course. Is it like a clinical course? Is it? Because I could see it being like your preceptorship. Does that make sense? Like, I could see it. So we had a preceptorship in our school. For my nursing school. I had a preceptorship like my last term. But it wasn't like transition to practice or like nursing profession course. It was like just your preceptorship course. So I mean, I don't, I don't know entirely what they're looking for. Is it more lecture based? Is it more clinical? Let me know. Does anybody out there in cyberspace, any of you guys have a nursing profession course?

So you never had a nursing profession course?

No, never had it. So yeah, I guess I just need more information before I can answer it because I don't know if it's a clinical based course. I don't know if it's a lecture based course. Okay, that's what I got.

Well, we can probably circle around back on that as people pop in any comments or whatnot. I'm sure you'll follow up with our member afterwards and we will do that. Kind of a 10, I'd say this is tangential question, the first question, but on Facebook, just are there any general tips on how to answer scenario based questions?

Oh, yeah, case studies. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. So Facebook, you asked tips on answering case study questions. So there's kind of two different case studies types that you'll see in nursing school. The first one is like the one that we just went through this morning. The case study that we did that's kind of your more traditional case study. Like they give you all the information in one and then you have a few questions to get answer. The other type of case study is where it's answer dependent. It's called an unfolding case study. Unfolding case study, meaning that you don't have all the information up front. You have to ask questions and assess and ask more questions and assess and then your instructor or the exam, however it will, it will be more dynamic based on the questions that you ask. So you know, for example, you have like, in this situation, like we Talked about, a 80 year old female has a fractured hip, just had surgery, you know, that's what we talked about. There was no mention of like vital signs, no mention of like lab values. So what if, what if, like we would assess the patient so like an unfolding case study would look kind of like this, you get that information and then like maybe we would ask, okay, what are the vital signs? Like let's assess the vital signs. And if I was your instructor, I could tell you, okay, her vital signs, you know, all, you know, like they're within normals. Like here's the, here's all the values for the vital signs. Or I could say, okay, now she has a fever. Our temperature is 101. You know her heart rate, her heart rate's about 110. Heart rate's about 110. Her respirations, they're like 19, 20. Right now you would probably be thinking, whoa, okay, something's going on. Like now we're, now we're starting to assess maybe more infection. Things like we're looking at, okay, what is this? Is it a wound infection? Is it sepsis? So you see what I'm saying? So that's kind of that other side of case study. Now when you are answering case study questions or any nursing exam questions, you have to be thinking constantly about three things. The ABCs, which is airway, breathing and circulation. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which means Maslow's hierarchy, if you've never looked at it before, it's a pyramid of priority. Basically the first priority is physiological needs. You have to solve physiological needs first, which are the ABCs, those go hand in hand. Physiological needs. Then you're going to assess their safety needs. Then you're going to get more into the mental health stuff. But primarily physiological needs, safety needs, those are the two that you've got to, got to be aware of. And then the next principle, the third principle is the nursing process which you are always going to follow the nursing process step by step, which means so. So you guys know the nursing process. Adpy, assessment, diagnosis, which is a nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. So you always have to assess your patient first. You can't implement something. You can't do anything with your patient until you assess them and know what's going on. You can't evaluate if your intervention worked if you don't do the intervention and you don't assess them first. So you have to follow it. It's a linear thing. You have to follow it step by step. Which means that when you answer exam questions, a lot of the time they will tell you, they'll give you like a case study, and then they'll say, hey, what would your. What would your priority nursing action be? What's your priority? What's the first thing that you'll do? What's your initial action? And sometimes they'll give you something to do, like give a medication or do a treatment, do something like do an intervention. Or they'll say assess blood pressure, assess heart rate, assess their mental status. And when you see something like that, I really want bells to be going off in your mind.

Whoa.

Assessment comes before doing something. Assessment in the nursing process comes before doing an intervention or evaluating something. Let's make sure that there's nothing that I need to assess first. So you really need to be thinking that when you are going through your nursing exam questions, make sure that you assess your patient fully first before you do things, because you have to know what's going on first. You have to assess them before you do nursing treatment.

Right.

Does that make sense? So can you save this live, please? Yes, this live will be up on YouTube. Yeah, this is. This is a really good conversation. So. So definitely it'll be up on YouTube.

All our lives are on YouTube after the fact. So you can definitely go back over there and check out any of the other ones. Once they've been up for a while, I'm able to go back and actually put timestamps next to each of the questions. So it will hopefully get you to where you want to go.

Olivia's like, yes, yes. So all the information that we do on our lives, they will. They live forever on YouTube.

There you go.

So Matthew goes back and timestamps it. So, yeah, that was really good. If you guys are just joining us right now, been talking about case studies and how to answer case study questions, and we actually went through a case study. So if you need to afterwards go back, definitely watch this video up on YouTube after it's posted and get all that good, good information. So. Yep. So that is that those are the three principles you're going to want to follow when you answer case studies or really any exam question. ABCs, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, nursing process, those three things in tandem. That's what you need to do.

Awesome.

That makes sense. And then just be, you know, be open. Be open. Because those unfolding case studies, you know, those are kind of interesting. It's kind of a. It's a.

Choose your own adventure.

Yeah, I love those books. Yep. Choose your own adventure. We had, I had a fantastic instructor, fantastic instructor in nursing school for clinical. I love her. And she did unfolding case studies. We did unfolding case studies all the time before clinical and clinical. You have like, you know, your pre conference, post conference oftentimes where you meet before clinical and then meet after clinical. And so during those times we would do unfolding case studies and she was so fun. So yeah, she would have everything up on the board and we would have to like ask things and she would give us more information and sometimes we were wrong, sometimes we were right, you know, so it's kind of fun. Super fun.

A little comment from a previous topic that we were just talking about a course that someone was asking about, tips for a nursing profession course. We weren't really sure what that entailed. Yeah, someone mentioned that. It kind of sounded like to them, is it, is it an LPNM lecture course? So kind of.

Lpn. Rn.

Yeah. LPN to rn. Oh yeah, that's an rn. Not an.

It's an rn. Not. It does look like an M. It does look like.

But yeah. Is that a transition from LPN to rn? I'm not sure. So I'm not sure.

Yeah. Okay, so we got a lot more people joining us now. We had a question from one of our members asking what, like if there, if I had any tips on a course for transitioning to nursing profession. So it's a course called transition to nursing profession course. Transition to the nursing profession course. But I think like, I'm just wondering is it a, like I just need more information. Is it a clinical course? Is it a lecture based course? What does it entail? Because my school did not have that. My school had a preceptorship so that was all clinical. So you know, my advice is going to be different depending on what that class looks like. So I just need more information. So if you guys have that a transition to nursing profession course, let us know in the comments so I can give you a little more information and my tips, because I don't really have any because I don't know entirely what it looks like. So I just need more information.

He is also asking how do I succeed in big topics here? Big topics. Ones that we, we, we answer regularly by how do I succeed in fundamentals, pharmacology and Med Surg? 3.

The big three. The big three fundamentals, pharmacology and med surg. We can make something go. We can make a go of that. The big three. That's so funny. Okay, should we just jam on all three of these things?

Yeah, I'd say probably a quick overview. Like I said, we've discussed this earlier. So maybe just since it's all three, just a high, high level view of each of them.

All right, I'll do a high level view. If you guys have questions, leave them in the chat. If you need any more clarification, leave it in the chat and I can answer them. So here we go. Let's jam on it. Fundamentals in med search and start with those. So, so fundamentals and med surg are actually they. When you get to nursing school, it feels like they're two very different things that they are not. So in fundamentals you're learning what's normal with a patient med surg, you're learning what's abnormal. With the patient fundamentals you're learning some of the higher level, not higher level, but the more common disorders, which is still med surg. It's just a more basic med surge. So you, you might learn things about stroke, about diabetes, about heart failure. Those are really the three main things. The three main menstrual disorders you're probably going to cover in fundamentals. So those things. And then in fundamentals you've got fluid, electrolytes, you've got ABGs, you've got, you know, you've got to learn your head to toe assessment. Everything that's normal within the body. So that is what fundamentals is going to be. Then med surge, you're going to have the more in depth disorders. Pneumothorax, sepsis. Let's see, cardiomyopathy. Give me a respiratory one. I said pneumothorax, didn't I?

Asthma.

Asthma. Yeah, yeah. Asthma would actually probably be more fundamentals. It's super common. Yeah, that's a, that's a good one. You know, things like that, like pneumothorax, that's a, you know, cardiomyopathy, sepsis, dysis, you know, the more in depth med surge Disorders, glomerulonephritis, things like that. You will learn that in med surg. But the advice that we give works for both fundamentals and med surg. So focus on four main things. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. You absolutely have to know the pathophysiology or physiology, what is happening in the body with whatever you're learning, like what's happening. So with fluid and electrolytes, for example, if you have a patient with hyperkalemia, what is happening in the body? You have to understand the pathophysiology behind that first and then you can move on to the other three categories, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing intervention. So patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions are the four main categories. But you have to start with pathophysiology. You have to understand what's going on in the body first and then you can figure out the other three categories. Signs, symptoms, assessment and interventions. So that goes for both fundamentals and med surg. Now here's where students get stuck. If you're in a fundamentals class and you, you know, you look at our med surg advice like that, you say, well, that doesn't apply to me, but that's not true. Just like I said with fundamental, with fundamentals you're going to learn fluid and electrolytes, you're going to learn ABGs. With those things like metabolic acidosis, you have to understand those four main categories. Paleo signs and symptoms, assess, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. It still stands. Now with fundamentals you're going to get like some things that you just have to memorize, truly just memorize things like vital signs, you know, vital signs. You just have to memorize the vital signs. You know, the head to toe assessment is a lot of learning. What's normal can be a lot of memorization too. You know, how do you, how do you assess? Like what's the, what's the, the, what's it called? The sequence of assessment. You know, what's the sequence for like an abdominal assessment or like, you know, cardiac assessment? You know how, you know how, where do you, where do you put your stethoscope? All those things are just a lot of rote memorization. And so with that I recommend flashcards and whiteboards and practice for the head to toe self assessment for sure. Like the skill practice, practice where you're putting your stuff with skill placements.

Tangent really quick. Someone on, on YouTube just asked a little earlier, critical thinking, does studying to memorize do any Good. And this conversation is that there is a place for critical thinking where you're actually critically thinking through the process and trying to tease out stuff. But there are also things like Christine is mentioning that it's just memorization. It's just rote memorization. And so yes, there are some things where studying to memorize does do good when it is not critical thinking. But you kind of have to make that judgment call on that.

I think it's such a. What do you call it? A misnomer or just a lie? Just a myth, really. A myth. You've heard, have you guys heard this? Have you heard this? That you like this phrase like you don't memorize, you need to critically think, or what do they say? Like you don't memorize things, you actually have to learn them. Something like that.

Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes rote memorization or memorization is kind of given a bad name, I guess. Is really what is. Oh, you're just memorizing. You don't really understand it, right. Is. Is what you hear or oh, oh, do you have to, you have to actually be able to understand all the in depth intricacies in order to really understand it. If you're just memorizing, then that's no good at all.

Right.

And I don't think that that is true. I think that there are things where you'd want to know all the intricacies of how something works so that you can really critically think about it. There are topics in nursing school that is really important to know that. But there are things that you just memorize.

Yeah, for sure.

I guess. Another tangent of a tangent. An example of that is maybe some, some mathematical measurements or whatever.

Those count.

Yeah, those count. You, you can memorize parts of it, but you don't need to actually know the mathematical proof of why multiplication works in order to know that multiplication works. Right?

Oh yeah.

Leave that to the mathematicians. You don't need to know the proof of every single mathematical equation that you use to solve those calc to know that what you're solving is working.

Yeah.

So just, just put your work into what really matters. So for nursing school. Yes. For nurses, there are things that you do need to know and critically think about so you can dissect it and explain it. But there are also other things where it's good enough just to memorize.

And I think of it as levels. I think it's something that instructors want us to do is to just jump to critical thinking. But you can't jump to critical thinking without knowing it first. You have to learn it and memorize it first and then you can critically think about it. Right? You can't critically think about it until you know it. So memorization and then you go to the next level. But we're not saying that you just stop it. Memorization. Right. Sometimes you can, but. But sometimes you can't. You know, you got to think about this stuff.

All right, so sorry about that. So that was about.

Oh, fundamentals and med surge.

Fundamentals and med surge.

Yeah.

The last part of the big three. I like that. The big three, Three, just high level farm.

Yeah, Pharmacology. So pharmacology. And I thought I saw a pharmacology question come through somewhere. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just thinking pharmacology questions in my head. Pharmacology. So when you're studying pharmacology, the biggest thing that you're going to want to do is focus on studying the mechanism of action. The mechanism of action, particularly of the drug class, but definitely of the medication itself. So the mechanism of action, in the same way that pathophysiology is to med surg disorders, mechanism of action is to medications and pharmacology. So when we say for med surg, study pathos, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. For pharmacology, we say study the mechanism of action, which is how the drug interacts with the body, what is it doing in the body? And then the side effects, what are the side effects of it, what's the assessment? And then considerations, nursing considerations.

How do you give it? Things like that.

So those are the four for each of those categories, Med, surg and pharm. So you have to focus, though, on studying the mechanism of action and knowing the mechanism of action. Once you know the mechanism of action of the drug or of the class or of the medication itself, then learning the other three categories, the side effects, the nursing assessment and the considerations are going to be way easier for you. So, for example, we talked about. What did we talk about last week? We talked about like hydrocodone or something. That was a good example. I also often use a furosemide. It's a diuretic. So furose miter, Lasix. Probably heard it as Lasix. Furosemide. Lasix is a loop diuretic. So it's a mechanism of action. It's a loop diuretic. It's going to kick out water and fluid from the body like no one's business. That's what gross mind does. That's what Lasix does. Kicks out water and fluid like no one's business. So knowing that, that's a very high level mechanism of action. That's, you know, very high level. Knowing that general mechanism of action, what do you think the side effects might be? Now we also always consider side effects to be what happens if it went a little bit crazy and did its job too much? Like did it too well. What if it kicked out too much fluid, too many electrolytes out of the body? What would you see? That's going to be a lot of your side effects. So for example, dehydration for sure. Boros mite can cause dehydration. That's one of the side effects. Decreased electrolyte levels, basically all of them. Because it's going to kick out electrolytes from the body. Like I said, nobody's business. So that's how we answer pharma questions. That's how we learn pharmacology.

Awesome.

I hope that helps.

Great. For those just joining, welcome to Nurse School show ama. We're currently answering nursing questions, nursing school questions. Lots of pretty heavy hitters this morning. So we're trying to get to as many as possible that will help as many people. So I'm trying to capture all the other ones too. So go ahead and keep writing in comments any more questions and we'll see how many more we can get to.

If you guys joining are just joining us, you will definitely want to go back and restart this video afterwards because this like first half hour has been very, very important for you to know in nursing school. Pretty heavy kids. So definitely go back and watch it if you are just joining us because it's been super helpful so far. Actually these are really good question.

Hooray Joe for class. Getting out early.

So hi Joe, welcome.

All right, next up. Hi guys. It's my first day of clinical today and I'm nervous. Any tips on how to prepare? Also, what can I expect for the.

First day, first day of clinicals today and I'm nervous. Any tips? I, I mean always, always my advice for clinical is to just raise your hand like you should just walk around your clinical facility just like this all the time. Like, hey, I'm here. If you ever need me to do anything, I'm here, I'm here. So IV starts, you know, chest tubes assessments. So if it's your first clinical, it's going to look, you know, it's going to be a lot of, a lot of just wandering around. To be honest, I think our first clinical day we did, they did like a scavenger Hunt. So we knew where everything was. Especially like you, you're in your first. If you're in your first term of nursing school, like fundamentals, and it's your first clinical, like you don't know anything about anything. Right? Like I didn't know anything about anything.

Ask questions for clinicals and volunteer to help out the nurses.

Perfect. I love it. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

So.

Oh, this goes in how. Okay, well, let me finish that first and then I'm going to answer that because they're kind of the same. So you need to just have your hand up and raise for everything at clinical. Your first clinical day and your first like clinical couple of weeks, regardless of what term you are in, because it's going to change constantly. It's just, it's always going to be kind of this transition period. You know, it's going to take you a little while to feel comfortable. Right. And you may never feel comfortable. That's fine too. But just do your best. So you're gonna have to learn where everything is. You know, learn kind of how the unit or floor, wherever you are, facility works. And really, if it's your first clinical in fundamentals, you're really going to be focusing on the head to toe assessment. Like that's really what you're going to be doing all term. Because I don't know if you really can do anything else. I mean, blood pressure, you could do vital signs. It depends on what your school has checked you off with. For us, I think that I was able to like fundamentals. I think I was able to give like an injection like week 8 or something. Like it was really far into the term when we had checked off on that skill and we were able to do that at clinical because you have to like check it off before you can do it at clinical.

You know, so they teach you something and then you need to. It's a show that you're competent in doing it before you. They actually like let you loose. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

That makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. So you have to like show that you can do it in skills lab, then they check you off and then you're able to do it at clinical. That's how my school worked. So it wasn't until a lot later that we were able to do, you know, those like injections and things. I think honestly, first term it was really just like those like giving shots, flu shots or whatever and insulin to, you know, anything injection like that. So that was it. Head to toe assessment, that was basically it. Vital signs, that's basically It. So going back there was a really good question.

As a student nurse, how would you deal with nurses who are not willing to show you stuff during your clinicals? Instead, they ask you to change beds or shower patients. I don't like this.

I watched a very good video a few years ago, and it has stuck with me. It was Ashton Kutcher.

Why would that stick with you?

It was Ashton Kutcher, and he was at some. Some event thing, and he had a speech. I really love him and Mila.

Oh, yes.

I think they. I just love it.

Okay, so what was like, one of those graduation speeches?

It was one of those graduation speeches.

One of his movies.

Lot of respect. I don't think I've watched his movies. Yeah, I have a lot of respect. I have a lot of respect for people who love marriage and treat it well. So that's my personal. That's. I love them. So I watched this video with them a couple years ago and with him, and he was saying. He was talking about how, you know, obviously how successful he is now. And I don't remember entirely exactly what the quote was, but basically it was just like, have this value that there is no job that is beneath you. He said, like, he was on stage at this, like, Academy Award something, or other kids choice, teens choice Awards something, whatever. He was talking to young kids, and he was saying, there is no job that is beneath me, and that is the heart that we need to have, especially when we go to clinical. There's no job that is beneath you. So if your nurse is not letting you do the fun things, the nursing things, like, I don't even want that to be in your vocabulary at all. Because nursing. What is nursing? Nursing is caring for people. And if you are doing bedpans, if you are showering patients, if you are treating them with any dignity at all, that is nursing. Okay, I feel. I feel my soapbox coming on. I feel me getting a little bit. Little bit. You know, I'm not gonna go all Christina on you guys today. I'm gonna remain calm. But that is my two cents about that. I really liked that video, and it has stuck with me for years.

Yeah.

And it makes me happy. There you go, Ashton Kutcher. There's your shout out.

Yeah, I know. I. I totally agree with that. You may not like it, but I mean that. Yep. That's what you're there for.

That's what we're there for. That's what we're there to take care of patients and showering patients. And what was it I don't remember the actual changing beds and showering patients is caring for people and that's what nursing is. So I don't want to be rude. I'm not going to be rude.

All right. Okay, great. I saw a couple other comments coming in about how to study pharmacology right after we finish talking about how to study for pharmacology. So definitely go back. Watch this through the first half of this or first part of this. AMA is very heavy hitting on beginning nursing topics. So definitely go back and talk about that.

Like the first half hour of this AMA was so good. So please go back if you're just joining us now.

All right, Someone's asking, how do I make use of of a planner? Hello, how do you make use of a planner effectively?

Oh, hi. Unknown on YouTube, it is the first time you've been able to see us live and ask questions. How fun. Because it's 12:30am where you live.

Wow.

Wow. Welcome. Thank you for joining us at 12:30 in the morning. Wow. That's dedication for you. Okay, sorry, what's the question about a planner?

Yes, how to make use of a planner effectively.

Okay, let's GMO nursing school planner for a second.

So we, we do have a nursing school planner that I am prepared do have for you guys. For members it is. We have an undated one in the membership community. There's also one for sale in the membership community that's like 18 months longer. Whatnot we were. It is also I think on our Website still our 18 month planner. Is it? I don't know.

Yeah, it is, it is. But you can't find it on our website. But you can, you can go to it if you have the link which I will tell you what it is. Right now it's nursing schoolofsuccess.com forward/planner. I wonder where I got that.

It's a little hidden but you can find it.

Nursing School Success.com forward slash planner. If you would like to purchase this printable, downloadable digital planner.

Printable and downloadable only. Don't expect it in the mail unless you get it printed on your own.

Yep.

So anyway, we do have that one. This advice is not just for this planner though, really kind of any. Just the. The topic in general. How to plan your day or how to use a planner.

How to plan your time. Okay, so I always recommend that you plan your time hour by hour. Here's why. When I did this in nursing school, actually I started doing this in college before nursing school. School. I know some people are like, well, isn't nursing school college? And you would be right. Except in my case, when I went to college, like, three times. So nursing school was my last round. So when I was in my first, like, kind of round of college, I started doing this for college. Then I did it again in nursing school. So helpful because. Okay, hour by hour. Can you guys see that? Hour by hour schedule?

Could be a little blurry.

Might be a little blurry. Sorry. Hour by hour schedule. Okay, there we go. So planning your time hour by hour. Hour by hour. Because you find time that you didn't know you had, and you basically, I had no idea how much time I was wasting and I had no idea how much time I was wasting on things that didn't matter, didn't move my life forward, and basically just spinning in anxiety a lot. Like, there was just a lot of, like, Christina thinking time that I was wasting time with, you know, just totally wasting time with that. So that is what an hour by hour schedule does. Because when you write it down, when you plan your time hour by hour, you know what you're doing and when you're doing it. If you just make a to do list, you're like, oh, I have all these things to do. I have this whole list of things to do. But you don't actually plan on when you're gonna do it. So it's like setting yourself up for failure, right? It's like, I just have this whole long list of things to do. I guess I'll try to get them all done. But if you take that to do list, write it on your schedule, hour by hour, fill in exactly when you're gonna do things, exactly when you're gonna do those things. Then you have a plan. You don't have to think of it anymore. You don't have to think of that anymore, that to do list, because it's all on your schedule. It's all on your. Your planner. So that's how we do that. I recommend that you plan your time hour by hour. If you don't, it's totally fine if you don't want that. Digital planner. If you go to nursing. Schoolofsuccess.com forward slash planner. Nursingschoolsuccess.com forward slash planner. You'll be able to download that one. It is. It's not a physical planner unless you print it yourself, which we recommend that you print it yourself if you would like. But yeah, it's a PDF download, but.

We'Ve seen people do it in a lot of other ways on our Membership, community. Someone posted on Facebook group her example of just an Excel sheet.

So Excel spreadsheet, Anything works. Anything works. Just go to Target, find a planner.

Just get it down on paper hour by hour. If you want to overachieve, you can do it by 15 minute increments or whatever like that. I know someone that does do that. Yeah, 50 minute increments. It's a little much, but at least hour by hour so that you know where your time is going and then you can.

And.

Plan around it or find out exactly what's going on and then you can. There's a lot of aha moments that happen during that process, actually.

Do you remember this? In our private Facebook group, she posted her schedule and she's like, christina, I had no idea I had so much free time. It's like, I know, friend. That's exactly what happened to me too. Fine, so. So that works. Go find yourself some more free time, friends.

Yes.

Hour by hour, playing your time, hour by hour. Boom. There you go. There's that one.

Next.

Next question.

All right, what review book did you use to review?

NCLEX Saunders Comprehensive Review Guide, which I don't have over here. Saunders Comprehensive Review Guide for the NCLEX RN Examination, I believe is the full title. Saunders Comprehensive Review Guide to the NCLEX RN Examination. There you go. Yep, there you go. That was the physical book. The app that I use is called the NCLEX RN Mastery App or the nclex Mastery App. That's it.

Okay, the other part of that. Can you put your baby on your show at the end of the segment? That would be cool.

Put your baby on the show at the end of the segment. That would be cool. I like that. No, so here's the thing. Like with us, we've. When we started the. When we started this Ask Me Anything show and you guys know, okay, we've had some people who have been with us for years. Do you guys know that I've been doing this for like three or four years now? No, because nobody knew who we were back then. I started nursing, so I was like a blog and then it became a YouTube show and now it's a live video show. And you know, with all these new things and we've talked about this as like, our platform has grown and like we've had a larger audience and, you know, we just don't want to show our kids. Kids as much. You know, we like to keep our, Our. You know, that's not. I, I don't feel like. Yeah, I just don't want to show. Show our kids that much.

Yeah. Yeah, so that makes sense. They pop up very, very rarely.

Yeah.

Usually in just random pictures around. But yeah, we.

We do sometimes on my Instagram stories, but not very often.

But we do want to kind of segment that part of our lives as well, so.

Yeah.

Yep.

Joseph. Yeah. And I mean, if you're in our membership community, you know, so. Yeah, I mean, sometimes we'll post. Very rarely, though. I mean, really? Yeah, I mean, we just don't. We just don't really show our kids.

Yeah.

So we have two of them and they're wonderful and we love them.

If you get a video from Christina, sometimes you'll hear crying in the background.

So that's them. That's them. They will pop in periodically via the audio because I do videos a lot and they're like, in the background. Like, our. Our oldest will be like, at the door. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. I'm like, doing a video. Super fun. So there you go. Mom life. Yep. Oh, what advice would you. Hey, Terrell, what advice would you give to someone in Med surge? So we talked about this. Do you have the time stamp for it? Actually, Matthew, when did we talk about Med Surg? No, it was like 9:15. It was about a half hour ago. Let me just jam on it again really quick. In Med Surg, you have to focus on four main categories. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. You might be tested on some things that are outside of that, but it will be very rare, few and far between. Not a big deal. Those are the four main things you're going to be tested on. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing intervention. So you will notice when you're inside the nursing SOS membership community, that's how we break down our videos into those four main categories. Pathos, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, nursing interventions. Because those are the four main categories you have to know. So that's it. They all kind of go in tandem together, but that is how we study Med Surg. When you think of core content, that is what you need to be thinking. And inside the membership community, as a Nursing SS member, you don't have to, like, go through your textbook and sift through all this information. You can just sit in class. If you don't understand something, come home, watch a video of me teaching it to you, because our team has done the work for you to condense the information into the things that you absolutely have to know. So the videos inside the Nursing SOS membership Community are those things that you absolutely have to know.

There's a follow up question to that is how do you study for pathophysiology?

How do we study for pathophysiology? It's a good question. I break things down step by step. That's the only way that I have ever studied for patho. That is my, I think that is, that is really where my value add is. That is where my spiritual gifting comes into play, is that I have the ability of taking a textbook and condensing it down step by step for you to follow. And so when you watch any of our patho videos, that's exactly what I do. I break it down for you step by step. So that is how I teach and that is how I know to learn. So when you're, when you're studying pathophysiology, if you're not in the membership community, if you are, watch the video on it. If you're not, that's fine. When you read your textbook, try to think to yourself, okay, what comes first in this patho? And then what happens? And then what happens? And then what happens? And try to put it into steps for you. Try to put it into steps that you can follow. I truly think that that's the best way to do it. Because if you think of patho like it's just man, I mean, there's a lot of patho for each disorder that you're going to learn. And that I think is just the easiest way is to just break it down step by step. Break it down step by step. You know, some things you can think like, you know, on a high level, okay, like this one thing happens. Like for example, for example, this is like mechanism of action with a medication. For example, like furosemide. The mechanism of action, how it acts in the body or kind of that physiology in the body is that it is a loop diuretic. It acts on the kidneys and it kicks out water and electrolytes like nobody's business. That's not broken down for you in like step one, step two, step three. It's not like, oh, well, I mean, I can do that. Like furosemide goes and acts on the loop of Henle. The loop of Henle and the nephron in the kidney. And then it tells it to get rid of, like keep more water and electrolytes to be excreted through the urine. Like you, I could break it down for you step by step. Sure. But really what would be most helpful in that situation is like, well, it Just kicks out water and electrolytes like nobody's business. So that's what we say, right? So for like that, like high level, you can put it into one sentence, that's fine. So things that you can put into one sentence is great. But if not, then I would recommend step by step. Also with pathophysiology, it's very, very easy to get overwhelmed with all of the information out there. So I don't have my books. I need to get my books and bring them back in here because I'm always referencing them. Here's what I recommend specifically for patho and really for. I guess this is more for patho, get yourself. You need two textbooks. If you're not in the membership community. If you're in the membership community, use that. But if you're not, get two textbooks, books, one textbook. That is a deeper pathophysiology, meaning it goes to like the cellular or the chemical level in the body. These would be things like your med search textbook, maybe the Merck manual. What else? I mean, Merck is really good. It goes down cellular, chemical level. You know, any textbook, really, any textbook kind of will go to that extent and then you're going to find yourself one that's a higher level. And this would be the one that I recommend is the pathophysiology made incredibly easy. Have you heard that series Pathophysiology made incredibly easy series. So. Or like the made incredibly easy series. There's like fundamentals and pluralize. And I'm reading they have a patho one. So definitely check that out. So that would be you want two resources, you want one that goes deeper level in the patho and then you want a higher level one that doesn't necessarily hit the deeper level stuff because those two things work in tandem. I would go to the higher level one first. Like if you're trying to learn patho, use the, you know, pathophysiology made incredibly easy textbook to get a general understanding of what's happening. Have a general understanding first and then look at the other resource that goes deeper on like the chemical or the cellular level level, and then to understand what happens deeper. Does that make sense that I communicate that well?

Yeah, so. So there's really two kind of levels and it just depends on what level you want to dive deeper into.

So, yeah, okay.

Yep.

Okay.

Very cool. Joe, we've been getting this comment a lot for our membership community that is there a place where we can concatenate all our YouTube videos? Because there's a lot of content on YouTube. So that's probably on my to do list to start working on doing that and concatenating everything. We do have a lot of information out there on YouTube land, so it will take a little bit of time for me to do that. But that is on my. My to do list. I will put it in my planner on a certain hour to start working it. So that is what we will do. Also, I did see your question. Joe asked a little bit earlier that OB is really not his jam and he was looking on videos on our membership community. But do we have any other tips.

On that for ob? Were you getting stuck in any particular place for ob? It's totally not my jam either. Ob, like when I was in. When I was in clinical in nursing school, labor and delivery, totally not my thing. And I've had two kids and it's really not my thing anymore. Just don't want to deal with that. Oh, man. But to all you L and D nurses, we have a lot in our community actually that want to do L and D. Yeah, that's a big.

I just say throw it up in our Facebook group too. And I'm sure people there have.

Oh, yeah. Let me answer your questions. Sorry, Joe. Let me actually answer your question. Really? OB.

Problem, including complications.

Preterm, including complications.

I can't read preterm.

Yeah, preterm, including complications. Okay. So. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so here's the thing with ob, Your school, depending on how your school does it, your school might want you to go really in depth on those things. Oftentimes that's not the case. So oftentimes for things especially like preterm complications, a lot of it is going to be rote memorization. It truly is because you don't listen. Listen, friends. Okay, so. So if you're doing anything right now, just. Just hang on tight for a second, like, stop whatever you're doing and like, listen up. In nursing school, your instructors are going to tell you to do something a certain. But oftentimes they are wrong. They need to say certain things, you know, because they. It's almost like a liability thing. That's how I. That's how I frame it. It's a liability thing. They need to tell you to read everything in the textbook. They need to tell you that you have to know all of this, all of this stuff in the book. They're going to tell you that. That you can't graduate until you know all of this. It's just not true. This is volume two. There's another volume that I Got in fundamentals in school. Was I going to memorize everything in those two textbooks? Absolutely not. Impossible. I cannot do that in 10 weeks. It's just not going to happen. So same thing with L and D, same thing with critical care, Same thing with pediatrics, same thing with oncology. If you are studying, you know those are nursing specialties. Those are truly nursing specialties where when you work on the floor as a nurse, you can go get another certification for those specialties. When you're in nursing school, the competencies that you have to graduate with are the general nursing competencies to start work as a competent and safe nurse. It doesn't mean that you have to know all all of the intricacies of critical care, all of the intricacies of oncology. All of those oncology medications that you might see given on an oncology for the NCLEX is not going to test you on like super deep specific specialty information because those are nursing specialties. So when you are in like labor and delivery, specifically what we're talking about, when you're studying, you know, for ob, labor and delivery and nursing school, your instructors, yes, they're going to tell you that you need to know everything about everything about everything. It's not necessarily true. So focus on studying. Like we always teach those four main categories. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. And it stands with OB as well. So with ob, if your instructors want you to know all those four main categories, study those four main categories but leave everything else out. Study those for the major complications that you have to know. So that's my advice for that. I hope that was helpful. But you do not have to know everything.

There you go on Instagram. What's the best way to study for med search? So that, that seems to be an ongoing topic for today.

Everyone's a med surge.

Instagram only. Only a couple seconds left. So real quickly, go back to the beginning of this. We reposted on Instagram or go hop over to YouTube and everything's there as well. So we did talk about it earlier at the beginning of this AMA and also kind of like halfway through it.

So definitely go back to YouTube. Okay, Instagram. We only have an hour with you, so it's telling us. Bye. Bye. So see you later. Come over to YouTube, dear. Alrighty. So Facebook, YouTube. We're still on.

We are still on.

Yeah. So med surge. We have jammed on Med surge a lot this hour. So if you have any questions on med surge, pharmacology and fundamentals, we really hit those big three a lot. A lot, a lot this. This hour. So definitely, if you need help with any of those, go back, watch it. I really think, like, this AMA is so good. So bless you. So please share it with a friend. Just because, like, at the beginning of this AMA also, we went through case studies. Oh, man. You guys. So if you are just joining us now, make sure to watch the beginning of this hour and the whole hour because it was just so good. So go to YouTube, you know, find this one.

And this is a good one. Lab value reference guide.

Do we have a lab value reference guide? So we. We have a lab value cheat sheet. Is it on your list? It's. It's. It's. Nursing schoolofsuccess.com/sign up. Nursing schoolofsuccess.com forward oh, it is. It is there. If you can go down. Lab values.

This one.

There you go. Yep.

Okay.

NurseSchoolOfSuccess.com lab values. There you go. That's fun. There you go.

All right, so I put it in YouTube, but Facebook. Yeah. NurseSchoolSuccess.com Labvalues should get you there.

NurseSchoolOfSuccess.com Labvalues it is actually a vital signs and lab values cheat sheet in combination of each other. So that's fun. We do have a lab values reference guide. So here's the thing with the NCLEX exam. They do have roughly, here are the lab values that you need to know. Pharmacology. They do not. They don't have a list of meds. So we just do the best we can with Farm. So again, we jammed on Farm earlier in this hour. So if you have any questions on that, please, please. I'm not kidding, you guys. This is probably one of the best AMAs that we did and have done so doing. Doing so good. So, so helpful. So go back, please. Please watch this hour because it was just super helpful. Walking through case studies, med, surg, fundamentals, and pharm. Those are really the big ones that we're all struggling with right now.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So again, we can't get to all your questions all the time, so I am kind of capturing some of them and we'll look through and get to more in future AMAs.

But do you believe written remediations help with ATI?

Oh, okay.

Do you believe written remediations help With ATI? Like, written remediations? I don't understand. Can you explain the question or can you kind of clarify your question? In what way help like, because remediation, like for the ATR Hussey, it's going to be written, it's gonna, like, they're gonna give you, like, here are the things that you have to focus on. Is that what you're asking? Like, is that helpful? I. I'm not. I'm just not clear on the question. So if you can expound on that, I would like to answer it. Also, nursing SS members, you have a form inside the membership community. So if you have questions for me for the AMA or the tutoring calls on Tuesday. So nursing SS members, you get to. You basically get three tutoring calls a week. Yeah, you get these AMAs Mondays and Wednesdays at 9:00am Pacific Standard Time. And then on Tuesdays, I also do a private tutoring call every Tuesday for our members. That's just for our members. And It's Tuesdays at 2pm Pacific. So you have, if you log into your dashboard in the membership community, click on bonuses and then up at the top you'll see a form that you can submit. It says submit your question here, here for tutoring calls or whatever. Like, click here to submit your question. And then it's a form that you can fill out for tutoring calls.

And then you be sure to select if you have a preference on which one you'd like us to answer it on. Yeah, if you want. Yeah, on the AMAs or on the Tuesday tutoring call.

So, Charlie. Yes, So I don't really remember what I said. Honestly, I'm assuming it's written. Yes, I mean, I think that written remediations help because. Because they give you a list of things that you have to work on and then those are the things that you're going to have to work on. So, like, for me, when I took the hesi, you know, they printed out this whole thing like, hey, Christina, here's your kind of knowledge.

Yeah, this is where your. Yeah, this is, this is where your average is, where you're exactly not as good as other people at.

So.

Yeah, and then I think, yeah, I just, I. I'm not taking any of those tests, but I have taken other, other certifications and whatnot. And yeah, they do give you kind of a baseline and yeah, it's a nice thing to show. Okay. I really know this information, so maybe I need to focus on this. But you know what? This one, I was a little bit deficit, so I should focus a little bit more on that. So.

Yep, for sure. Yeah, I think it's helpful in that way. Cool. All right, all right. Friends, we will be back with you on Wednesday at 9am Pacific Standard Time. So Wednesday? So we do these AMAs Mondays and Wednesdays at 9am Did I say 9pm 9am Pacific Standard Time. If you're a nursing SOS member, I will see you tomorrow on our live tutoring call at 2pm Pacific Standard Time, 5pm Eastern tomorrow.

Yay. Is that it?

I think that's it.

All right, we'll talk to you guys later.

We'll catch you later.

Thanks for joining. Bye.