Your Top Nursing School Questions ANSWERED!

In this video, I am answering your questions. A couple weeks ago, I posted this over on Instagram asking you for your top nursing school questions. We got a lot of responses. So I'm really excited to dive into your questions today. I'm going to answer as many as I can. Hopefully I can get to all of them. So we'll see how we do. All right, I'm going to flip through my phone because they are obviously on my phone and I have not read these yet. So this will be fun. We'll see how it goes. Okay? 30 year old mom of two and a wife. How to manage it all. All right, my friend. So managing a family and kids and everything in nursing school, it's a lot. Here's what I always tell nursing students. When you get into nursing school, it's not like your life stops, right? You have a thousand things going on outside of nursing school, not just school now, right? So you really have to figure out how to. I don't like that word balance, but like a balance, right? It's kind of seasons. I like to think of it as seasons of life rather than a balance. Right. You're not always going to be 50, 50 family and nursing school, you're going to be. Think of it more as season. So this is a season of nursing school. Nursing school is a lot of work, right? So there are a lot of things in family and life stuff that might need to be kind of set aside for now. Put paws on for now while you're going to nursing school and doing this huge endeavor, right? Nursing. So I really would try to think of it that way more as more in the terms of season rather than balance. That way you just don't beat yourself up because you don't have to make sure that everything in your life is sliced equally. Right. You know, you don't have to sleep a third of your day and study a third of your day and spend a third of your day with your family or work. You know, that's not how life works. So when you go to nursing school, think of it as more of this is just a season and this season is going to pass. So as you're in nursing school, this is your. This is a really big priority for you, right? So you want to make sure that you are putting a lot of time into it, obviously set expectations with your family. You know, you said you were a wife so you know, talk with your husband, you know, who's going to do the dishes and the laundry and maybe he can help with those things or you know, have we've also heard from nursing students who's, you know, their mom comes over and helps clean. Mother in law helps with dinner sometimes or with the kids. You know, figure out a way that you can make it work, but make sure you're incorporating your family into that so it's not just, you know, you trying to make all those decisions or, you know, get everything kind of set for nursing school. That's not how family works. Right. You need to make sure that everyone's involved and everyone knows the expectations and there's a lot of clarity around who's doing what and how the house is going to be managed as well as, you know, giving you enough time to study and go to nursing school successfully. Now, question number two. How to take great notes? Sweet. Love this question. So when you are in class, I have a very specific note taking process that I always recommend. So I can tag a link to another YouTube video that he did on note taking. But let's run down a few things here. Let me grab some pretty props. Okay, so I have here a PowerPoint for. This was actually my nursing school's PowerPoint. I kept it all these years. So I always recommend that you print off your PowerPoint slides in a group of three slides. So there's, there's slides here and then you have lines on the left hand side. So three slides and then lines for notes. So what you're going to want to do when you're in class, I always recommend that you take notes using one color of pen when you're in class and then when you get home, take notes using a different color when you study from other sources that are not your instructor. Okay. So that way you know where your notes came from, you know what notes came from your instructor in class, and then you know what notes came from the textbook or a video you watched online or something like that. So when you're in class, you can use, you know, I have a black pen here, but you can use like a purple pen or whatever for the notes that you take in class. And I always recommend that you take notes on the lines here. This is how I did it. So my in class notes were on the lines. And then when I got home, I would take notes from the textbook or things in the margins, around the side and then on the back. So that is how I did it. That was my process for note taking in nursing school. And it was really, really nice because it kept everything super organized. You're also going to want to make sure that you don't lose any of your notes, right? So make sure that you are keeping them all in one place, like one, you have one lecture binder or where all of your notes live so that you don't miss any notes while you are studying. So that is my biggest recommendation for note taking is definitely the two colors and then obviously making sure that you have all the notes in one place. Now I will put a link to a YouTube video that I did on note taking down in the description below, so you can check that out too. All right, next question. How to learn when you're self teaching because the professor is taking weeks off and then it being condensed. Okay, so that was the question, how to learn when you're self teaching due to professor. Okay, so it sounds like your professor was taking some time off and then. Oh, and then it being condensed. Okay, so what you probably mean is that your instructor took time off and then maybe your class, instead of it being like 16 weeks, is like 12 weeks or something. I'm thinking that that's what you're, what you're getting at here. So this is really, this is kind of everything in nursing school, the name of the game. You need to figure out how to learn things faster, right? Whether your class was condensed or whether it wasn't. And you still just have to remember a whole lot of things in a very short amount of time, which is nursing school, right? So that is, that is really, that is really what we do in nursing school is figure out how to learn things faster. Now, I have a lot of great tips depending on where you are at in your program. And I have a, I have two things for you, actually. I have a free critical thinking cheat sheet for you that will walk you through how to critically think faster in nursing school. So that is huge, as you know, because you're going to be tested on critical thinking. So the faster that you can learn and critically think about the information that you're learning, the better off you're going to be. So I'm going to put that down below, snag that cheat sheet because it's going to help you so much. Then the second cheat sheet I have for you is a study checklist and that will walk you through how to study study for, you know, the classes that you're in that'll give you some really, really fantastic study tips that will help you, you know, figure out how to study and learn things faster. But let's go over a key, key kind of framework for how to study. Okay? So anytime you are studying a disorder or a topic in nursing school, there's four key things that you're going to want to focus on. The pathophysiology, the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment and the nursing interventions. So anytime you were studying a disorder, this is med surg, this is fundamentals, this is ob, this is pediatrics. Anytime you are studying a disorder in nursing school, those are the four main things you're going to want to focus on. Patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. When you focus on those four main categories, you cut out a lot of the erroneous information that is not going to show up on your exams anyway, anyway. And you're then focusing on the things that you are going to be tested on. Those are the four key things that you're going to be tested on on your exams. Those are the main ones. So of course your instructor might randomly pull a question or two from other places in from your lecture class or from your textbook. That can totally happen. But for the most part, you're going to be tested on those four main things. Paleo signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. So if you focus on those four main things, that will really help, they'll really help you learn things faster. And you know, like you said, take a, basically I'm inferring from your question maybe a 16 week term, taking it down to like, I don't know, 12 weeks. So I hope that helps. Best way to effectively study in nursing school, really, those four key things, Patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. So many nursing students, here's the problem. So many nursing students really want to know everything about everything about everything and it's just not possible, right? You cannot know everything in nursing school. You have to focus your study time. If you don't, you are going to end up knowing a whole lot about or a whole, you're going to know a little bit about a whole lot of things, but you're not going to know enough about the things that they test you on. Okay? So when you're focusing though, when you're focusing your study time on those four main categories, that is what you're going to be tested on. So it's a much more effective way to study. It's a lot more efficient because that's obviously what you're going to be tested on, right? You're not trying to learn a whole bunch of erroneous information that you're never going to need to know for your exam. Dose calc, tick ticks, tricks and tips. All right, so biggest thing with dose calc is that you have to make sure that you set it up correctly and that you use the proper conversions, that you know your conversion factors. Okay? So you've got to know, you've got to know, you know how many tablespoons are in an ounce, you've got to know gram conversions and milligrams to grams. You've got to know the conversion factors, right? Have those memorized. That's really number one. Number two is you have to be able to set up the problem, right? And I always, always, always recommend that you do not use a formula. Okay? We always teach in any one of our other YouTube videos that talks about dose calc. Always recommend dimensional analysis. Now it sounds really scary and it's not. It's just a big fancy word for how to set up your problems the easy way. That's all it is. So dimensional analysis is a way to set up your dose calc problem so that you get the right answer every single, single time. You don't have to use a formula, you don't have to make it all complicated and memorize a bunch of formulas. No, no, no, no, no. You just set up the equation and then it gives you the right answer. It's beautiful. So if you are confused on any of that and how to do it, I totally get it. I have tons of jokes calculate videos here on this channel to help you with that. I walk you through step by step, a lot of practice problems and all of that. So, so I'm going to link those down below too so you can check those out. But really those are the two biggest things with dose calc. Make sure you know your conversion factors and make sure that you are setting it up properly and using dimensional analysis, not formulas. Okay? Deal? Deal. All right. Nursing. Oop, I lost it. Nursing school with three children and a full time working partner. Yes. So we kind of talked about that in the beginning. Going to nursing school with a family, with kids, you know, it's really like I said, it's about seasons. Don't think of it as balance because I think that just really causes a lot of stress, a lot of unneeded stress. Because like I said before, you do not, you do not have to divide up your life into like pieces of a pie, right? And all of them being equal. That's not how life works. So just think of it as seasons of life. This is a nursing school season and that's okay. It's a season, which means it will come to an end. All right, so you are going to graduate nursing school and then you can you know, spe more time with your family and your life and all of that stuff. But right now, one of your biggest focuses will be nursing school. And so think of it that way rather than, you know, having to balance all the things. How, ahead of time do you need to start studying for the nclex? Great question. Okay. I wish more students asked this question. Now, I recommend that you start studying for the NCLEX from day one in nursing school. Now, that sounds scary, but it's not. I really, really want you to kind of maybe reframe how you're thinking about the nclex. The nclex? Yes. While you will need to study for it after you graduate, a lot of your studying is just going to nursing school. Like, it's, here's, here's the thing. There's a misconception out there that the NCLEX is totally different from what you're learning about in your program. And it's not. What you're learning about in your nursing school program is, is exactly what you're going to be tested on on the nclex. So if you know, if you're going to a good nursing school, right, and they are teaching you what you need to know to pass the nclex, that's how it is. Nursing content is nursing content. So it's not like the nursing content you're learning in nursing school is different than the nursing content you are tested on on the nclex. That's not how it is. Heart failure is the same in nursing school as it is on the nclex. Right. So what you're learning, the content that you're learning in nursing school, what you will be tested on on the nclex. Now, with that said, it is really nice to be practicing NCLEX questions throughout your program and then of course, when you graduate. So when you are really, you know, when you've graduated nursing school or maybe you're a few weeks from graduating, when you really start diving into practice questions and making sure that you're, you know, getting good scores on those practice tests and stuff like that, that's really where you will figure out where your stronger areas are and where your weaker areas are with learning. Right. With what you know about the content. So that is really where you'll want to focus on your weaker areas. Obviously, if you're good at something, you don't have to study that as much as the things that you're weaker in. So for me, when I took the nclex, two things that I really had to work on was farm and lab values, all the numbers and stuff. So that is, that was a big part of my focus before I took the nclex. So just making sure that you, you know, are focusing a lot, learning the content as you go through your program, that you're understanding things that will really, really set you up for success. Of course, when you go and take the nclex because like I said, nursing content is nursing content. So don't freak yourself out. Yes, the NCLEX big exam, but your nursing school is preparing you for it the whole time. Okay? So I hope that gives you a little bit more confidence today to just know that. So I hope that helps. All right, next question. Study tips and study plan. Can't focus on studying so I need some serious help. Okay, Study tips and a study plan. This is everything that we do inside the nursing SOS membership community. So my friend, I know you're not a nursing SOS member yet. I hope you join because we will help you come up with a study plan. We will walk you through how to study and we will teach it to you. Everything you need to know for your exams. I mean it is fantastic and amazing. So I hope you join again. I'll put the link down below in the description for you to check out all the details down below. You're going to love it. So if you need help with a study plan, if you just don't even know where to start, that's where to start. But it will give you a major study tip right now. Okay. I always recommend that you study for two hours outside of class for every hour that you are in lecture class per week. Now I know a lot of nursing students are like wow, that's a whole lot of time. Yeah, it can be, but be realistic. All right, so don't like take this to the nth degree and over exaggerated or anything. Just like use this as a baseline study for two hours outside of class for every hour that you are in lecture class per week. So let's say for example you have like a three hour pharmacology class and a two hour med search class. Two hours might be a little short for med search class. Let's say you have a four hour med surg class and a three hour pharmacology class. So then you would study for six hours for your pharmacology class per week and then eight hours for your med surg class per per week. That would give you a kind of a benchmark of how much time to study per week for those classes. Does that make sense. So two hours study for two hours outside of class for every hour that you are in class. That will really help you. Give you a benchmark for how many hours to study. And make sure that you're also not overstudying. Because a lot of times I see nursing students over studying a lot because again, you want to know everything about everything, and that's just not how it works. We don't want to do that. Okay. Because overstudying can be just as much of a problem as understudying. You don't want to burn yourself out. All right. How to set a study schedule while having kids. Everyone's got family questions. Yeah. Everything that we talked talked about, I think. Let's talk about this though. How to study with kids at home. That is very tough, especially if you have little kids that need your constant attention, constant help. I've helped nursing students who just had a baby, like they have a newborn, are studying. If so if you have a newborn, number one recommendation is to wear your baby. That is what I do. That is what I have always done. Wear your baby as much as you can because that will really help you study. If you have a little older kids, like toddlers, what I recommend for them is, well, it's called a busy box. I talked about it on my Instagram stories a while ago. But it's like we have. It's just like a box for toddlers. It works really well for toddlers. It's got like Play doh. Well, we pack ours with Play DOH and like crayons and coloring things and stickers. Oh, my stickers. Just things that they can do, do and stay busy with. Right. With their hands, like blocks to put together. And I have them packed in individual Ziploc bags. And so what, what we do is anytime I have to do something or actually we helping one of our other kids do homeschool stuff, I get this busy box out for our toddler and I take one Ziploc at a time. So one of them is Play doh. And then when, you know, our toddler gets tired of Play doh, then the Play DOH goes back in and then get another one out, like the blocks or something like that. So that's how we do that one for older kids, you know, probably four, five and up, you know, just activities. Honestly, the workbooks that Costco has for like little kids, like preschool and you know, like school age kids like workbooks, activity books. Those are great. We love those here in our house. So, you know, anything that they can do Legos or, you know, just like kid games, right? Like, they've got, you know, well, blocks. Who doesn't like blocks? Train sets, you know, things like that. Just, it's just like toys that they can play with quietly while you are studying. So that is the. That is really the name of the game when you have kids, especially little kids at home, and you're trying to study, like, what can they do while you are studying? That. So those are my. That's what we do here at, in our family. And I hope those help you too. While you're studying, have them come up with activities for them to do. Oh, whiteboards and markers as well for toddlers. That is huge for our busy bunks too. There's one last tip for you. All right. Most important things to know about medications. Fabulous. Glad you asked. When you were studying pharmacology, there's four. Four things that you have to know. The mechanism of action, the side effects, the nursing assessment. So what you're gonna assess for before, during, and after administration, and then nursing consideration. So how are you going to give the medication? Are there any, like, things that you got to know about it kind of thing? Those are the four main things. Mechanism of action. It all starts with the mechanism of action. What does this medication do in the body? How does it act in the body? Then the side effects, and then the nursing assessment, and then the nursing consideration. So really, administration, how is it given? Farm and then how to study groups together. That's a farm Questions. So I'm assuming you mean classes. So how do you study medication classes? So when you are studying pharmacology, I always recommend that you group medication by class, not learn them individually. Right. So when you are learning them. Let me grab the flashcards. When you are learning medications individually, you are gonna have a whole stack. Well, I can show you actually our whole stack of medication clock medication cards. Let me grab them for you. So when you think about the medications that you have to know in nursing school, it's, you know, all of these. There's a lot. They are in. In our flashcard pack. We do still give you the individual cards for you to have as a reference. But also the biggest thing is the medication class cards. So can you see the difference and how many you need to know? So this is why we recommend learning the classes. Learn medications by class, not individually. So with. With individual medications, you would. This would require you to memorize a whole lot of things. Whereas if you just group meds by class, then you can learn them as a Group together. So let's say you know any antiarrhythmic medications, you know, you can learn all of these together because they're all anti arrhythmics, they have a similar mechanism of action. Anticholinergic medications, same thing. So these are all the class cards that we have. Electrolytes, antihistamines, my tons and tons and tons of. So all the class cards, all the medications broken up for you so you can memorize them. Not really memorize, learn them by class rather than having to memorize all of these things individually. It just makes it a whole lot easier. So when you break up your medications, make sure you are breaking them up by pharmacologic or therapeutic class rather than learning them individually. It's going to save you a time, ton of time. I mean, literally like what, a quarter of the time. Crazy, right? I know. Pretty cool to see when it's a whole stack like that. All right, study tips, please. I think we covered that. Oh, I'm gonna mention that again. The study checklist. We do have a fantastic study checklist for you that walks you through some really, really, really, really great study tips. So I'll put the link for you down below so you can snag them. How to have a life. Going into second semester, it's going to be rough. How to have a life. Like I said before, you know, it's seasons. Okay, two things. It's seasons. Nursing school is going to take up a lot more of your time now than obviously when you weren't in nursing school, right? So this is a big priority for you right now. Now, as far as study tips, the critical thinking cheat sheet, and the study tip, the study checklist, you're going to want to download both of those things because that will help you study faster. Of course, if you're a Nursing SOS member, you don't have to worry about any of that because in our nursing SOS membership community, we help you make a study plan and we walk you through everything you have to know for your exams in nursing school so you don't have to figure anything else out by yourself and be all alone trying to learn everything you need for your exams and trying to get your questions answered by yourself, you know, that's not, it's not a good plan for nursing school, right? So if you're a nursing SOS member, you can just log into your membership and we will teach you what you need to know. We have all the videos there for you that walk you through step by step, what you need to know for your exams. All right, how to better explain abnormal labs on care plans. Let me see. My professor said I need to improve. Okay. How to better explain abnormal labs on care plans? Well, anytime you are explaining, like, why something might be happening with a patient, this goes back to critical thinking. You have to really think to yourself, okay, why is this happening? Why is this lab value happening? So let's say, for example, you have a patient who is, like, has a whole lot of swelling in their body. You know, a whole lot of swelling, and maybe their lab values are decreased. So if you have a patient with swelling, oftentimes you'll see your lab values being decreased because they have so much fluid in their body that it's not that the lab values, like, you know, your. Your electrolytes, it's not like your electrolytes are actually decreased. It's actually a relative decrease because there's so much more water. So. Right. That's critical thinking. Right. So look at what's happening with your patient. Okay. Look at what. What's going on with them. What's this goes back to the patho. What's the pathophysiology? What's happening with your patient? And then connect the lab values to that. That will really help you. So that is critical thinking in nursing school. So everything that I just did, everything that I just explained here, that's exactly what we do inside the nursing associate membership community. So we do not expect you to memorize anything. You know, we walk you through why things happen. We walk you through the critical thinking behind everything so you don't have to figure it out for yourself. Like, we are here to hold your hand through nursing school. So definitely check that out if you think that that would be helpful for you, which I think it will, is helpful for everybody. Okay? Tips for electrolytes and peds. That's what my second semester consists of. Help tips for electrolytes and peds. So electrolytes and pediatrics, same thing. It's really those four main categories. You have to know the patho. Then you have to know the signs and symptoms. So what signs and symptoms are happening because of the pathophysiology? And then the nursing assessment and then the nursing interventions. That's it. Okay. And then connect the three things back to the pathos. So why are the signs and symptoms happening? Why do we assess for the things that we assess for? Why are those. Why do we do those nursing interventions the way that we do them? Right. Connect it all back to the pathophysiology. What is happening with this patient, connect it all back to that patho. That will really, really, really help you figure out, you know, how things connect together, really that critical thinking behind it all. All right, Study tips for board exam. So we kind of touched on this a little bit. Make sure that you are focusing on your weaker areas rather than your strong areas. I know it's really tempting to continue to study the things that you already know, but that's not helpful for you. We want to study efficiently and effectively. So focus on the things that you are the weakest in and then that's obviously a more efficient way to study. What to expect in the last semester of nursing school? It depends on your program. If your program is, you know, advanced med surg the last semester, then that's what to expect. Advanced med search. It's a. It's a lot more in depth and a lot more critical thinking than your regular med surg class if you are in, let's say so for example, my nursing program the last semester was more like delegation and leadership and all that stuff. That honestly I thought was a little bit easier than the med surg stuff. But you learn how, you know, you. You learn more on the legal side of nurs saying and how to delegate. You know, you go through more in depth documentation stuff and all those things. So it just depends on your program. A lot of programs have a capstone or like a culminating project kind of thing where you might have to do a research paper or a big project so that, you know, just make sure you plan for, make sure you know when your deadlines are, the due dates for everything so that you don't miss a deadline because you don't want to miss a. And just, you know, do. Do as much as you can as early as you can. Anytime you have a big project or a research paper, you know, just try to get as much out of the way as early as possible so you're not scrambling at the end of the semester. How would you sum up the first year of nursing school? Ooh, that's a good question. How would I sum up the first year of nursing school? Let's see. I would say there's a lot of putting fires out in your brain. That's kind of a weird way to put it. It's like there's a lot coming at you. There's a lot of information coming at you all at once. And you kind of just have to take it in stride, right? You have to take it one day at a time and then it will feel like your life is Kind of in flames a lot because there's just so much happening in your brain and it just feels very overwhelming. And then as you go through your program, things are going to start to come together and it's going to. Things are going to start to make a little more sense. But when you are in your first year, it really does feel like you have all of these, like all of this scattered information and you don't know what to do with it. That's okay. That's normal. So like I said, take it in stride. It does. It's a big, big growth year. That was the other kind of word I was thinking in my mind is like growth, right? So you are going to grow leaps and bounds in your first year of nursing school. You're going to learn how to study better. You're going to learn kind of how they test and it's going to get a little easier every day. Just, you know, what to expect. Which makes it, that should not be discounted how much of an impact that makes in nursing school when you actually know what to expect and you know, kind of, you know, how your instructors teach and what's coming up and all of those things. It takes a lot of stress in the overwhelming way. So I guess that's how I would sum up the first year is that there's just, you are putting a lot of fires out in your mind. You know, just like there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, mental energy that you've got to exert, obviously, trying to learn so much all at once and then, yeah, you're just gonna grow a ton. You are not going to be the same person when you graduate as you are right now, which is a very, very fantastic thing. Right? You're gonna, it's, it's gonna just mind blown it. Amazing. Pharmacology, please. So pharmacology again, four things. Mechanism of action, side effects. So mechanism of action of the medication, side effects for the medication, nursing assessment, what will you assess for and then the nursing consideration. So administration, what are you going to do before, during and after that stuff when you focus on those things? With pharmacology, when you focus on learning the met, the mechanism of action of the class of meds, that is your key to success with pharmacology. You don't want to just have to memorize a list of side effects. Right? That's not, that's not how we do it around here. You want to know the mechanism of action of the class and then connect the side effects Back to that mechanism of action. So whatever's happening in the body, connect it to the side effects, connect it to the nursing assessment, connect it to the consideration. Let me get into this. This is kind of long. Dummy down nursing questions. How do you pick up the info that you need? Dummy down nursing questions. Am I supposed to know what that phrase means? I don't know what that means. Dummy down nursing questions. How do you pick up the info that you need? So I think what you're asking is like there's just a ton of information. How do you know what to study? And it's just that, honestly, Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions. It always goes back to those four main things, my friend. If you are trying to study everything about everything about everything in nursing school, it's not going to work. It's just not going to work. You have a limited amount of time to before your exam, right, to study all these things. So you have to focus your study time on the things that are most efficient for you to study. And that's those four key things. Those are the things that are going to show up in your exam. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. That's it. So focus on those things and everything goes back to the patho. So just like pharmacology, right? Everything goes back to the mechanism of action. Well, with everything else in nursing school, it's the patho. Everything goes back to the patho. So the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment, the nursing interventions, all of those things connect them back to the pathos. So what is happening in the body and then everything else flows from there. That is critical thinking. So I do have that T sheet for you, that critical thinking cheat sheet. Download it. It's going to save your life in nursing school and help you study way, way faster and way more efficiently than you are probably right now. So definitely check that out. And that is all the questions that we have. This was so exciting. Tell me in the comments if you want to do this again. I think that this was really helpful. I'm really excited to answer your questions over on Instagram and as well here on YouTube. So if you want to do this again, just leave a comment down below, let me know that this was helpful for you. And I actually just a couple weeks ago did this video on the top things that you have to study for, like you have to know these things for your exams. So be sure to check out that video. You do not want to miss it because you want to get all your questions read on your exams, right? So that's going to help you do that. Now go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will see you next time on the Nursing School show. Take care, my friend. Bye.