Jennifer
What are some test-taking strategies/tips on passing the NCLEX-RN exam to become a registered nurse?
Rather than spending your time dreading what’s to come, remember this is a hurdle every nurse has had to jump before earning his or her scrubs. So who better to learn from than those who have gone before you?
#nurse #nursing #nursingmajor #college #testtaking #studying
3 answers
Aaron Langford
Aaron’s Answer
Jennifer,
I come from a family of nurses - though I was the first to complete nursing school and everyone else trailed behind me. In addition to studying and passing the NCLEX myself, I've helped my mother, brother, and sister study for NCLEX and all three of them passed the first time.
The best way I know to prepare for any nursing exam is to take practice questions. There are numerous sources of practice questions - typically textbooks have CD-ROMs or publisher website resources where you can find practice questions, there are numerous NCLEX prep books that have study guides and practice questions (some of these you can find at your public or school library), and various online sources and smart phone apps for NCLEX-type questions. The best advice I can give you is to practice taking full-length NCLEX exams - not just exams that give you 75 questions.
Find a practice exam that will give you a score that shows you what you scored well on and what you scored poorly on in terms of content areas. A big mistake that students often make is wasting time studying content they already know fairly well. If you've scored 70-80% or higher on a certain area, I wouldn't focus much more time studying that content. Focus your efforts on studying content where you're weaker, that's a better use of your time.
You can go to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) which is the organization that creates the NCLEX exam and look at the test plan to help you get an idea of the breakdown of the questions/content that you will be tested on (https://www.ncsbn.org/testplans.htm).
Ultimately, remember the nursing process of Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation because that is essential to what we as nurses do, thus the test questions pretty much come from that process.
Aaron recommends the following next steps:
Kathleen Madden
Kathleen’s Answer
What I find helpful in taking any multiple choice exams:
Read the question and think of answer before you look at the choices, it will confirm the right answer for you, if you don't know the answer you can usually eliminate 2 answers.
An answer that says "call the Doctor" is usually not the right one. A professional nurse usually can make an intervention before calling a doctor.
https://www.dmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/MULTIPLE-CHOICE-TEST-TAKING-STRATEGIES.pdf
