3 Study Techniques That Will Get You Through Nursing School!

If your planning on going to nursing school or are already on the path to becoming a nurse, I have a few study skills that will help you breeze through your tests. I used these study skills throughout my paramedic program and also throughout nursing school and I can honestly say without them I would not have passed.

Ok study skill one… FLASHCARDS!! These little study buddies are priceless. Nursing school is filled with statistics, vocabulary, disease processes, pathophysiology, physiology, vital signs, its to much!! You cant expect yourself to read over a book and remember all of these little facts. Do yourself a favor and flash card EVERYTHING.

A lot of people fail with flashcarding, because they dont understand how to do it properly. The best technique is to break information into tiny little chunks. The mind can have trouble processing large chunks of data. If you break a large general topic into many small questions you can integrate that information much more easily. Once you learn the small questions, the larger general picture will be much easier to grasp.

Study skill two…. Use the textbook on a NEED basis. One of the biggest mistakes I see students make, especially in the pre-requisite classes (because they havent learned yet), is trying to study completely out of the book. The textbook can be a huge time sink, I have seen many students fail using this technique.

The fact of the matter is, the professor is not going to test you on anything that was not covered in class, or specifically pointed to as a MUST read section. You should be studying off of your notes, flashcard those notes completely, as long as you have all of the knowledge in the lectures down, you pretty much will pass with flying colors.

Now I am not saying not to use your textbook, but try to only use it when you need to better comprehend a concept. Use it as a reference. I literally went through Microbiology and Anatomy and Physiology with no Textbook, and while I saw my fellow student getting 60-70% test scores from book studying, I was getting 96-102% scores because I studied what matters.

Lastly, and I know we have all heard this before, but I have to say it, STUDY GROUPS!! Study groups are incredibly effective in bringing your knowledge together. When you go to a study group you will spew out the limitless jargon that and statistics that you have learned thus far in your class. This is where you find out what you have down so far that is WRONG. Your classmates correct you, the new knowledge is cemented, and now your closing gaps in your education.

Also study groups allow you to teach other people the knowledge you have learned. If you have the knowledge down to where you can teach someone what you know, then your truly ready for the test. Not to mention teaching others will further cement what you have learned and give you confidence for the exam.

Also if your looking for visual and scenario based nursing practice questions you can find help at the cna training institute, they have some great emergency and scenario prep tests and questions that can definitely help.