This book is going to be my best friend throughout nursing school (I love colors so I thought it was a must to have my hair match the book in the picture). Every time I’ve needed clarification on anything thus far this book as been able to answer it in the most simplistic forms. I’ve used it for my Intro to Med Surg class (first exam is tomorrow, I’ll write how that went and how this helped me). I’ve used it for my first Patho exam and received an A and felt very confident. Side note, about feeling confident. A fellow student came up to me today and told me why she didn’t do very well on our first Patho exam even though she studied her butt off. This has happened to me and multiple fellow students of mine. A little advice, don’t go in over confident. I have made more mistakes on exams when I go in overly confident. I tend to skim the questions instead of thoroughly reading them; therefore, missing what the question is actually asking. This is exactly what my friend did. So, slow down, ESPECIALLY when you know the information.
Studying Techniques
This is the beginning of my Fluid and Electrolyte notes for my Intro to Med Surg. This lecture was over 100 slides, it was a lot of very necessary information but I had to condense it. It ended up being 5 pages. Yes, this is still pretty long but like I said, it’s a lot of necessary information. This is one of my longer sets of notes (it’s also covering almost half of my exam, so it makes sense).
I have gotten asked a few times this week at school what I do to study so I thought I’d post this blog to help anyone else who may be confused out there. I must say this is how I study and I do not guarantee good grades or anything along those line. I am giving recommendations, everyone learns differently and I recommend molding this however anyone might need.
For this particular chapter I made sure to make my main topics the different diagnoses and made sure to describe signs/symptoms, clinical manifestations, and nursing considerations. If there were any tid bits that my teacher said I would write that in a different color on the side of the paper because those are usually pretty important details. IMPORTANT: MAKE IT COLORFUL!! My eyes are drawn to my notes (I’m a huge nerd, I know) nevertheless, my brain likes looking at my notes, it helps me learn. I use the same colors or color palate according to each class. Purple for Med Surg, pink for Health Assessment, blue for Patho, and green for Pharm. This helps when I’m looking at my agenda and what I need to get done. For things like Normal Ranges I usually put in another color and outline it with a highlighter. I usually refer back to these multiple times throughout the semester and sometimes even in later semesters. If I have any acronyms for diagnoses I will also put those in a stand out color in the margin next to the term.
Use whatever resources possible. There’s a lot of information and there is not one perfect way to understand it. So try different things, this one helped me.
Making My Nursing Life 