NCLEX Coming Up? Don't Throw Out Those Class Notes Just Yet

During nursing school I remember wanting to get rid of every trace of my notes after finishing a class (specifically the classes I didn’t enjoy). Fortunately, I fought off this urge in most cases and kept many lecture notes, note cards, PowerPoint slides and books from my completed classes. This proved invaluable as I sat down to study for the NCLEX (the National Council Licensure Examination).

I don’t believe it is particularly necessary to RE-study all of your notes from all of your classes, but I do think it’s useful to go through them again as a refresher. I also found it helpful for those particularly difficult subjects such as pharmacology and acute care nursing to have some basis from which to start. For lab values, terms, and definitions I found that some of my old note cards worked best to quickly run through in the midst of studying more difficult subjects. Most textbooks also have NCLEX questions at the end of the chapter to review, so it might be worth holding onto some of those old books instead of trying to sell them right away.

Of course there are many other great ways to study and prepare for the NCLEX (most of which I have covered in previous blogs). Today I just wanted to remind those of you who are either just starting out in nursing school or are in the midst of the program – don’t be too quick to clean out your desk. Keeping this material as you go through the program (and even studying as you go) is one of the best ways to prepare successfully for the exam. It helps if you are familiar with the material and the methods of studying (such as your note cards in your own handwriting from previous exams) and can easily decipher the information rather than wading through a lot of new information.

Have you successfully passed the NCLEX? What advice would you give students in preparing for NCLEX during nursing school? What notes and information from previous classes helped you? Please share your thoughts!

Nurses Start To Occupy

As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum, more and more people are joining this loosely organized group of people – including many nurses. Nurses in San Francisco are joining forces in support of a tax that could help fund health care services, while nurses in Washington, D. C., marched in support of the government taxing banks to increase revenue to taxpayers and their patients, of whom many are unable to pay for their own medications. On Wall Street, the National Union of Nurses (the largest union of nurses in the country) marched in support of the movement and the need to hold the financial district accountable in order to provide for the poor, unemployed, and uninsured in our country.

The original idea of Occupy Wall Street is based around the concept that 1% of the nation’s population controls over 40% of the nation’s wealth and that the gap between the wealthy and middle class is growing exponentially. Although there are no apparent leaders in this movement, nor does there appear to be a specific agenda, the idea is that it is a movement by the people for the people to grab the attention of the rich and powerful in order to promote change.

As future nurses in our country, how do you feel about the Occupy Wall Street movement? Do you feel like this is a movement that nursing students and nurses should get behind? Why or why not? How is this topic important to you as a student nurse?

Look for the Seal of Accredidation

I recently read an article about a woman who started fraudulent nursing schools and scammed many would-be students out of thousands of dollars of potential tuition. I remember how poor and broke I was when I started nursing school, and can’t imagine what a setback that would have been for me in that situation. This made me wonder … how could so many students be duped into this scheme? And did they know what to look for in an accredited nursing school?

Accredited means to be officially recognized or authorized. For nursing schools there are two organizations that do this: the National League of Nursing Accrediting Commission (NLNAC)and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). Their primary goal is to ensure that nursing programs meet the standards and criteria laid out before them for their particular program (diploma, associate’s, bachelor’s master’s, etc.). If for some reason a nursing program does not meet these standards laid before them, then they are not accredited. Or, in the case of the aforementioned woman, there was no request to be accredited in the first place.

The importance of going to an accredited nursing school is that it is nationally recognized and confirmed to meet the standards expected of that particular program. It also allows you to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) in order to get your license. If you do not go to an accredited school you may not be able to become licensed (check with your state board of nursing), and then you would not be able to get a job as a nurse. It would also mean that you could not transfer to an accredited school if you decided to get your master’s degree, for instance.

So how do you know if your school is accredited? Most nursing schools proudly display their accreditation on their websites or in their information packets. But, you may also look up your particular school on the NLNAC website (www.nlnac.org) or the CCNE website (http://www.aacn.nche.edu/accreditation/) to make sure it is accredited.

How important is accreditation to you? Did you know your school was accredited before you applied?

What Nursing Students Can Do Today To Help Land That Future Job

We all choose to go to nursing school for one simple reason – to become a nurse. So while you are in nursing school the job market becomes a very important and real scene as you begin to scope out you future career.

My main advice for finding a job as a new nurse involves starting earlier rather than later. It is a good idea at the very beginning of nursing school to realize that every little thing you do, from your involvement with faculty and school functions to your job and grades, affects your ability to get that dream nursing job when you graduate. The importance of getting good grades is self-explanatory, but beyond that you should try to tailor your assignments to your future dream job. If you’ve been eyeing a job in the ICU,for example, tailor that big paper or large PowerPoint presentation to patients on ventilators,for instance. Begin to put these assignments in a portfolio that you will one day provide to a potential employer that is specific to their unit.

Use your preceptorship and internship as a method to land a job on that unit. Be professional and as excellent as you can be while you are there, because the nurses will take notice and most managers prefer to hire nursing students they know rather than complete strangers. Don’t be afraid to talk to the nurse manager about upcoming positions. They usually know well in advance if they will have an opening, and you could have an “in” before the job is actually posted.

Working as a certified nurse’s aide, patient care technician, etc., while you are in nursing school is a great way to get into the hospital. Most hospitals prefer to hire from within their own hospital rather than looking outside of it. It is also a great way to supplement your nursing education by working within the healthcare field while you are in school.

I have talked extensively about doing a nurse-residency program in other blog posts, but again, that is a great way to get your foot into the door of the hospital and unit where you want to be. Remember that it is okay to pay your dues on a unit that is not your first choice. Although your dream job may be in a different unit or field, take this opportunity to improve your nursing skills and build your resume up with experience. You may even end up liking the area and changing your career goals. Take it as an opportunity and not a disappointment.

Finally, use your contacts. If you have friends (nurses or not) who work at the hospital where you want to land a job, talk to them about how they got their job and what potential interview questions will be asked.

What experiences have you had in trying to find a job as a nurse? Have you used any of these tips? Do you have any others to add?

Creating and Encouraging Healthy Goals

In nursing school it is hard enough to get your coursework done, work at your job, and fulfill your family duties; adding a personal health goal on top of it may seem nearly impossible. Although as nurses we know what we should be doing to be healthy, oftentimes we are just as unhealthy as the patients we take care of. This makes setting a health goal a very important aspect of caring for ourselves and may provide some insight on how to educate our patients on doing the same.

When setting a health-related goal, it is important to pick one that is realistic and attainable. Ideally you should have been contemplating making this change for some time and are now stepping into the “action” phase of committing to this goal. Or, perhaps you have relapsed in some area and are trying to start back on the right path. Some obvious suggestions for health goals include: smoking cessation, weight loss, exercise, stress management, and meditation and/or spiritual maintenance.

After recently giving birth to my son, I chose a health goal of running five times a week. The primary purpose of this was not only to help lose some weight, but also to have some alone time, feel the fresh air, and start to increase my mileage again. Another added bonus is that it helps to de-stress my life, give me an extra energy boost, and improve my sleep at night. I chose to use a half-marathon training guide on my phone as a way of measuring my success and keeping me somewhat accountable. I have also been journaling my success so far and keeping notes of what barriers, motivators, and accomplishments have affected my success.

What I have realized in journaling my experiences, thus far, is that there are a lot of barriers—either perceived or real—that greatly affect my success. This is important for me to realize because it helps me to understand why so many patients that I care for as a nurse seem to relapse over and over again. As a health care provider it is important to help your patient identify some of their own barriers to success, and to motivate the patient to overcome and succeed in his or her health goals.

What health goals have you created? What helps you to stay on track with them? What have you learned from your own health-related pursuits that has helped you care for your patients?

Remote Video Proctoring

Recently my graduate school (which is a distance education program) has announced that it will be implementing remote video proctoring during all of our exams. This means that we, as students, have to purchase a video recording device that has a 360 degree view of our environment and also records audio. It must also have a fingerprint-reading device to ensure that we are, in fact, the person taking the exam. The video and audio recordings are then sent to a separate off-site location to be reviewed for signs of cheating.

The idea of the video proctoring is to cut down on cheating and hopefully create a testing environment that is similar to that at nursing school. This means that prior to taking the exam there should be no books, papers, audio, cell phones, etc., in your environment. My personal study space needs to be as similar to a simple classroom as it can be.

This has raised many questions for us students. First of all, what about kids? Many students do not feel comfortable with the idea that their child may happen to wander in during an exam and be recorded and watched by a total stranger. Also, what about test anxiety? It is stressful enough to take an exam in graduate school, let alone when you know that you are being monitored and that someone is on the other end watching you.

I also believe that there are issues of privacy being affected by this. In essence, this is allowing total strangers to come into our home and observe us. This means that some of us will no longer be taking tests in our pajamas, talking to ourselves, or leaving the room to use the bathroom. While this will come as a huge adjustment to some of us, I also believe that it will help us in the long run to get used to this method of sterile testing again. Eventually we will sit for comps or board exams and we will all need to be used to a professional testing atmosphere. As great as it is to sit at home in our pajamas watching television and eating while we are taking our online exams, we may be getting a little too comfortable; remote proctoring could be what it takes to get us to sit up and start taking our exams like we mean it.

What do you think of remote video proctoring? Does your school implement it? How has this changed how you take your exams?

Learning to Care as a Nurse

Being a nurse, in its definition, is to be a caring individual. In nursing school we are taught that caring is a fundamental role of being a nurse. We learn all about the great nurses in history—Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton and Mary Breckinridge, to name a few—who show us exactly what it means to care. But what happens when we stop caring? How do we get it back?

I was recently speaking with a friend and colleague who started working in the Intensive Care Unit. She explained how guilty she felt that there were some patients that she honestly had a difficult time caring for. Some of these people included drunk drivers, suicide attempts, and convicts. She said that it was hard to care for a patient who did not care for themselves when there were people struggling for their lives who were good and honest people. My friend is an amazing nurse, and of course provides great care to all of her patients, but I appreciated hearing her honesty. What do we do in these situations when we simply lose that ability to care?

In nursing school I have seen this happen to a lot of students. It seems to especially happen when students start going to clinicals and taking care of real patients. Sometimes the reality of who our patients are does not coincide with the image we have of them in our heads. Prior to working with patients it’s easy to imagine that they will all be grateful, sweet, and overly appreciative of everything we do, but the reality can be very different. Obviously there are those nice patients, but sometimes it feels like there are more unappreciative and demanding patients out there waiting to make us feel more like waiters than nurses. How do we care for these patients?

I wish I had the answer to these questions, but honestly – we do care. Nurses become nurses because they are caring individuals to begin with. Even when you have a weak moment at work and feel as though you can’t possibly care for your patient – you do. Something inside of a nurse’s heart makes it possible to go into work every day and provide that amazing care that makes a nurse different than every other medical professional. It is what we do and no amount of bad days or difficult patients will ever take that away from us. We’re in it to care.