Using External Materials for Study

Posted by nurse on November 17, 2010 under Study Helps | Read the First Comment

Why is nursing school so hard? The retention rate and completion yardsticks for a nursing career, like state exams, annual competency testing, and course work and clinicals evaluations seem like an overwhelming testing standard. But these tests were designed to weed out students only dabbling in what are extremely critical applied sciences that could mean the difference between life and death for many patients.

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Many students who think they are smart enroll to find themselves left behind academically while struggling to complete basis courses. Or some nursing students may get through the gut courses like physiology and anatomy may seem easy at first when studied alone, but retention with years of further study and interactive labs may prove difficult. Nursing students must retain all their knowledge to the standard of excellence expected, and combine it with practical lab experience and critical care situations.

The academic study of some sciences and liberal arts is rarely tested as meticulously as a nursing education. Some students simply do not assess this circumstance until the pressure is brought to bear and the stress becomes intolerable. They do not anticipate being tired, going without sleep, performing twelve hour clinical care exercises, and yet being expected to master several progressive chapters of material that builds on previously studied material.

One missed chapter, one glossed over topic, and the nursing student will find themselves in trouble. When it comes time for the final exam, the nurse is caught between calling in sick to work, foregoing wages, quitting nursing school and staying in the program another year, or getting failing grades on exams. These ongoing performance crises can make a nursing student who sailed through their first year of LVN or RN training with perfect grades with draw or fail out in their third year.

Nurses must learn their basic rudimentary nursing courses well enough to remember all tenets of care in emergency and trauma situations decades into the future. They must maintain healthy attitudes and positive approaches to nursing study and surpass hurdles in their personal study careers. But many students may not have the best tools they need.

From time to time a nursing student must face the fact that the coursebook and materials are not providing adequate inspiration. A nurse is bound to absorb and master all information along the scheme of program study, to some extent, as well as possible. But the competitive nursing exam performance arena demands complete mastery. Supplemental materials are an excellent investment to complement coursework and clinical laboratory assignments.

Many technical parts of nursing can be improperly explained or taught as part of a larger whole of class lessons. If a student falls behind or does not understand all the concepts, the timetable of the classwork can advance faster than the nursing student can absorb the sense of the material. Nursing is procedural knowledge and practical application for treatment on a human being, there is no room for error.

Common problem areas inside a basic nursing education program are technically career preparations in themselves. Nurses are expected to know how to be EKG technicians, phlebotomists, front desk attendants, HMO client coordinators, critical care and fatal care attendants. Recuperative care, pediatrics, eldercare, and specializations within cardiac wards and respiratory departments must all be prepared for as if the nurse carried a full-time permanent position in each of them.

But of course these concentrated areas of study must be mastered in addition to greater knowledge of biology, anatomy, pathology of diseases and progressive and preventative healthcare procedures of treatment. So much research has been performed on medical diseases and treatment that only the most recently updated textbooks can provide the cursory overview required for treatment of nursing in the field for the next thirty or forty years.

Perhaps the mathematics is not well explained, or the chemistry suddenly seems over the nursing student’s head. Pressurization of blood gases and qualifying ranges of pressure for individual patients and their combined symptoms presentation must be evaluated for every patient individually. Recognition of EKG strips should happen instinctively, and without reference to textbooks or charts.

No “cribbing” for one exam can provide a lifetime’s worth of necessary knowledge on these subjects. but ancillary materials purchased for the nursing student’s own enrichment can bridge the comprehension gap in some areas until the material becomes clear.