It is 100% true that studying in nursing school is much different than the type of studying you did in your other college courses. The sheer amount of information that you must learn requires you to take a much different approach. Plus, we know that the exams in nursing school are a beast.
So, what is a nursing student to do? What is the best way to study in nursing school?
I created an approach through trial and error in nursing school that led me to be successful and that is what I will be sharing with you today. Please note that everyone has their own learning preferences so use my approach as a guide and modify it as you see fit. This is a breakdown of what will be explored:
- Focus on need to know information
- Breakdown each topic
- Focus on “why”
- Recruit online help
- Alternative approaches
- Learning styles
Here’s a video containing all the information in this post if you would rather consume the content in video form.
Focus on need to know information
The first secret that I am going to share with you is that not all the information that you are exposed to in nursing school is “need to know” information; there is a fair amount of “good to know” information that is included in lecture and reading material. What exactly do I mean by “need to know” and “good to know”?
“Need to know” information is information that is critical for your success as a nursing student as well as a working nurse. This is information that will be tested on in nursing school and the NCLEX; it also has high clinical importance. (Hint: this is the information you should be focusing on while studying.)
“Good to know” information is information that you should take note of but not spend endless amounts of time reading and reviewing.
So how do you know which information is “need to know” and which is “good to know”?
This may not seem easy to decipher, but you have a wonderful tool in your nursing binder that can help make this process easier! I have mentioned this before in my post about how to pass nursing exams, and I’m mentioning it here again because it is so useful.
What is this magical tool, you may ask? In order to determine what information your instructors want to emphasize, look at the nursing objectives they have defined for each module. These can guide you in your reading and allow you to focus on the information that is most important.
These nursing objectives should read something like this:
“The student nurse will be able to identify the signs and symptoms of hyperglycemia.”
When you are completing your reading you now know you should pay close attention to the information regarding signs and symptoms of hyperglycemia.
You will go through all the objectives for each module and make sure you comprehend the information associated with each of the objectives. This will be the information you will want to focus most of your attention on.
The rest of the material included in the required reading should still be completed but you will not need to spend hours studying that material. Simply make sure you comprehend the information on a basic level and move on.
Your instructors will also likely give you some insight on what material needs to be focused on. They may emphasize this information in their lecture and in clinical rotations to ensure you understand its importance.
Breakdown each topic
Ok…so when it comes to studying the nursing content, what do we do? How do we ensure that we study the information in a way that increases the chances we will retain the information for clinical application as well as for passing our nursing exams?
You will be learning a lot of different disease processes, so the best approach is to breakdown each disease into subcategories. For each disease process that you learn about you will want to focus on the following things:
- pathophysiology
- causes
- signs/symptoms
- treatment
- nursing considerations
(You can see this is the general format I use for the study material I upload.)
Pathophysiology:
This often requires a quick review of A&P of the system in question.
If you are learning about conditions of the cardiovascular system, then be sure to take the time to quickly refresh yourself on the basics of that system. This should not take a long time to complete- just make sure you brush up on any concepts you might have been fuzzy on.
When you are learning about a specific disease, make sure you understand the patho inside and out. The reason understanding the patho is so important is because it will allow you to understand why the patient will exhibit certain signs and symptoms as well as why certain treatment modalities are chosen.
If you don’t understand something about a disease process and its associated information, it is likely that you have a gap in your knowledge of the pathophysiology of that disease process. I cannot overstate the importance of understanding the pathophysiology.
Causes:
It sometimes seems as if this is somewhat of an overlooked section.
Often times textbooks won’t even go into much detail about the causes of an issue and will simply list them in a table that students may or may not read. These tables usually have a laundry list of causes listed, so I can’t really blame students for simply skimming over them.
This does students a huge disservice, however! Understanding the causation of an issue can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the issue overall (which is ultimately our goal as nursing students and nurses!)
Be sure not to skip over this part of the learning process. If you see a list of causes for a disease, then you should be able to go down the list and understand how each cause that is listed actually causes the disease in question.
Signs/symptoms:
The signs and symptoms should hopefully make sense to you if you understand the patho, as previously mentioned.
It can be helpful to categorize the s/s into the bodily systems that they affect- cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, respiratory, etc. This makes it easier to keep everything organized.
If you enjoy drawing pictures as part of your studying process, then this is a great way to illustrate what is happening in each system.
You should ensure that you are able to explain why each sign or symptom is observed and the hamster on the wheel in your brain should be asking “How is each of these symptoms resolved?”
Which brings us to our next section- treatment.
Treatment:
Now that we have learned about the disease and what problems the patient is likely to experience, we now need to focus on how to fix those problems.
If a medication is used to help a certain disease or condition, then it would be wise to look that medication up in your drug book or pharmacology book.
Review the medication information exactly like you would if you were studying the medication for a pharmacology exam. This allows you to understand the mechanism of action (how it is going to help the patient’s problems), side effects that may occur, and any teaching that you may need to provide to the patient about that specific medication.
Nursing schools and the NCLEX love to ask pharmacology questions.
If treatment for a condition requires surgical intervention, then study the procedure itself, how the procedure will fix the problem, as well as any complications that could potentially arise.
You should ensure that you are able to explain how each treatment option will help fix or improve the problem in question.
Nursing Considerations:
This category focuses on the actual nursing care that a nurse will provide.
Focus on the most important interventions that you would implement as a nurse.
Keep in mind this is more than what a nurses should do; it is also about what a nurse should assess.
Important nursing considerations to keep in mind
- Medications to administer
- Signs/symptoms to assess for- knowing when to call the doctor to report certain s/s
- Education to provide to the patient and their family
Focus on “why”
Now that we have squared away what information we should focus on, we need to ensure that we understand the “why” of this information.
You can see in the study material that I create that I always try to provide an explanation for why signs and symptoms occur or why a particular treatment is used.
The reason understanding “why” is so important is because the information you learn in nursing school cannot simply be memorized. You must be able to understand the information from the inside out in order to really succeed and excel in nursing school.
If you implement this study strategy, then you will me more likely to critically think during an exam and increase your chances of choosing the correct answer.
I don’t know about you, but I love the thought of increasing my chances of choosing the right answers on an exam!
Recruit online help
Whenever you are studying and you come across a topic that you are having a difficult time understanding, you may have to utilize another resource besides your textbook and instructor.
Thankfully, you have the world wide web at your disposal! There are a lot of great resources on the internet that can be of assistance. The whole point of this website is to provide free educational material for nursing students so you can check out the study material here as I continue to add new content.
I add study guides and cheat sheets twice a week!
Since my website is in its infancy, I do not have a large bank of information to search through. For the time being you can check out pages like RegisteredNurseRN, SimpleNursing, MedCram, Osmosis, TootRN, and Khan Academy. These pages have a lot of great information that can help you dive deeper into concepts that you are having difficulty grasping. (I used Khan Academy and TootRN quite a bit when I was in nursing school!)
Alternative approaches
Once you have all the information squared away in your brain, you can then focus on ways to make it more meaningful to you (which will have a direct correlation to your ability to retain the information).
There are different approaches and it simply takes trial and error to figure out what works best for you.
You could create a concept map for each disease (which studies have shown can increase critical thinking abilities and reasoning in nursing students.)
You could draw pictures to illustrate different disease processes. You do not have to be an artist to do this, by the way. As you may have noticed here on my website, I am not a great drawer. However, when I was in nursing school, I often drew different pictures while studying for my exams.
This is an actual drawing that I created while in nursing school.
It is a bit scary, I will admit, but it got the job done.
For particularly difficult concepts you may need to use several different approaches.
For instance, you may create a concept map for a topic and then put together a presentation that you teach to your study group (or a room full of your child’s stuffed animals). The point is that if you can teach the information, then you likely have a solid understanding.
The point of these alternative approaches is to diversify the way that you learn and study information.
Learning styles
Tailor your studying sessions to your learning style. These learning styles have been categorized as visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, social, and solitary.
There are many factors that can affect your ability to learn information.
There have been studies that have shown that individuals even have preferences for the time of the day that they learn best. Unfortunately, we cannot change the fact that we must be at clinical rotations at 0645 in the morning. However, we can control whether we do the majority of the studying in the morning or in the evening.
You may be the type of individual that needs to get up frequently and move around while studying. There is nothing wrong with having a dance party during your study sessions if that means you will learn better!
Figure out what works best for you and run with it!
Don’t feel like you only have one learning style either! I remember taking quizzes to determine my learning style and they would only ever give me one answer! Most of us have multiple learning styles that can be tapped into to optimize our study sessions, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Study everyday
Nursing students will often ask “How many hours per day or week should I be studying?”
Everyday.
That doesn’t actually answer the question though, does it? How many hours per day should a nursing student be studying?
Well, there is an important distinction that needs to be made. There is a big difference between learning new information and studying information that you have already learned and mastered.
The problem that often occurs is that nursing students will read and learn new information every day, but they do not go back and study the old information that they already mastered.
Every single day, you should take an hour to study old information. Information that may not even be on your upcoming exam.
This information may not be tested on your upcoming exam, but you can bet it will be on your final exam. And more importantly, a patient that you take care of in real life may benefit from your knowledge on the subject!
So, be sure to study every single day for at least one hour. I cannot emphasize how helpful this was for me when I was in nursing school.
The information I have included so far is great on its own but it’s even better when you combine it with the guide I wrote on how to pass nursing school exams. There are some great tips in that post to help you study and prepare for exams. That posts includes the formula that I used in nursing school to ace my exams so don’t miss out on that info!
As mentioned previously, studying in nursing school can take a bit of trial and error. It may feel like one week you’ve got it down and the next week you are grasping at straws.
This is normal and it’s ok.
Try out some of the different studying tips in this post and see if you are able to see improvements.
You can and will be successful in nursing school.
As always, reach out to me if you have any questions!
Happy Nursing!