Melinda Said:

What are some tips for nursing school?

We Answered:

1 You are the one paying for, studying for ,and achieving your degree in Nursing, so you are the only one that counts! Ignore the other voices. Everyone has an opinion about teachers methods, personalities, and capabilities. The teachers are there to help you be the best nurse you can be, so be open to that and don't let anything get in the way of learning from them. Not what others say, or what you may think or feel (if it gets in the way).

#2 Get a book that helps you like a road map through Nursing School and start using it before you even apply. I recommend "Test Success: Test-Taking Techniques for Beginning Nursing Students" by Patricia Nugent and Barbara Vitale. The first thing it discusses is Empowering yourself in order to achieve success.

#3 Understand the intent of questions (Test Success teaches this) there are components of questions used on the NCLEX that are "distractors", "detractors" "stem", etcetera.

#4 Increase your critical thinking skills. Do exercises and then think about why you came to the answer you did, this is critical thinking because you are thinking about how you are thinking and this allows you to change the way you think.

#5 Be open to mistakes as positive learning experiences, we are human and we make mistakes and in nursing school you are flying with a net so that your mistakes are caught by you or your instructor and the patients are kept safe. So be open to learning and improving what caused your mistake and don't waste energy on judging or blaming put that energy into learning and improving instead.

#6 Know your resources. Your instructors, your textbooks, the resources included with the purchase of your them. Often the books include CD's and an online resource with NCLEX style questions for you to practice on the material over which you will be testing. So use these resources and after tests go review your test (no matter what the score) with your instructor and ask for them to explain the intent of any questions you don't understand.

#7 Don't forget to take care of yourself. Eat right, drink lots of water, get as much sleep as you can, and spend quality time with loved ones!

The 2-1/2 year program is probably a very good way to go, just make sure they don't require a lot of pre-requisite courses that make the degree take longer (so that you are not surprised).

Good luck, below is a link to test success on Amazon but you can get it through the library or anywhere.

Hilda Said:

FSU Nursing Application help?

We Answered:

So you know, a registered nurse seldom works in a general pediatric clinic (because it's expensive to have one on staff). Normally they use medical assistants and / or LVN / LPN.