Nclex Review at School

Today my college had a nice Lady from Drexel come in and teach us about the nclex exam Its a monster of an exam. I am going to talk about the things that struck me most.

• Its never to early to start thinking about nclex because testing in nursing school is based on the nclex model
• Answer as many nclex questions as possible thats the way to find out what your weaknesses are and fix the problem therefore increasing your chances of doing well at nclex and school exams
• Nclex is checking 2 things if you can prioritize (remember the nursing process) and if you are safe (thinking critically)

These are just my thoughts on the whole nclex thing so now i will talk about what i learned from the whole class

• Time Frame : Always look at the time frame in the question e.g pre-op, post-op, early, late. One thing she told us that is probably going to stick with me is that time frame is important because of anasthesia .It may take up to 72hrs for anasthesia to wear off. E.g client comes in 1hr post-op
• Safety: When you see you see the word ESSENTIAL in a question its a question thats targeting safety of the patient and you answer this question using maslows hierarchy and when you see INITIAL ACTION in a question you need to use the nursing process and the INITIAL action in the nursing process is ASSESSMENT
• Terminologies : sometimes you may have no idea what a question is about stick with whatever is familiar to you and learn terminologies they may give you an idea about whjat the answer is. We had one question in the class that had to do with costochondritis and one of the answers had chest in it. That was the one i picked because i knew the sternum and ribs have costochondrial joints and my answer was correct. Some terminologies are blph for the eyes, cephal for head and cost for chest.
• Repeated words: words you see in the questions which are repeated in the answers. They point to the correct answer.
• Opposite answers: If in the options you have 2 answers that are oppostites, one of them is probably right e.g increased respiration and decreased respiration.
• Positioning: questions with nausea, drainage,swelling and pain may have answers that involve positioning. E.g clients are positioned on their sides if theres going to be nausea.
• Therapeutic communication: When asked questions like what is the best way for the nurse to respond? For this listen to the therapeutric communication tutorial on this website. It must be open ended and not be advice or corny stuff like "you are going to be cured".
• Odd answers: sometimes on answer just sticks out at you.That may be the right one because where all the other 3 answers aree similar this one is starkly different.
• Umbrella answer: you probably know this one.. the answer that covers all the other answers e.g we had one question with different ways to reduce pain and one umbrella asnwer that said reduce clients perception of pain. The umbrella answer was right because it included all the other 3 answers which were ways to reduce the clients perception of pain.
• Delegation : is important as well you need to know what can be delegated and what cannot
• Physical exam: you need to know your health assessment because they ask you to click on areas of the body where you assess maybe the apical pulse.
• Finally there are the words to look out for. The deadly, dangerous and safe words in the answers. Deadly words are absolute type words like never, always , all they are found in answers that are more likely to be WRONG along with the dangerous word. E.g you cannot say that ALL clients in the hospital get ROM excercises. Not every client needs ROM excercises. Safe words are found in answers that are most probably right.

• Deadly
  all
  every
  total
  nothing
  always
  each
  only
  any
  nobody
  never
  none

• Dangerous words are
• main
  chief
  avoid
  primarily
  major
  shall
  inevitable
  eliminate
  rarely
  impossible
  too
• Safe words are
  usually
  almost
  frequently
  probably
  potentially
  may
  sometimes
  partial
  some
  might
  should
  few
  essentially
  generally
  occasionally
  nearly
  maybe
  could
  commonly
  average
  seldom
  often
  normally

These are the stuff i remeber. Its important to remember to use ABC, ADPIE and MASLOW to prioritize. You need to know Digoxin inside out and pathophysiology and pharmacology are going to be important. Everything we learn will be tested so basic nursing knowledge is important but critical thinking within the nursing process is important. I guess everything is important!