Hi everyone,
I would consider this is the first post I ever made on a forum during my entire life. I want to share my personal study experience and my insights about some of the NCLEX reviews to those who are studying for NCLEX and taking this important test soon. I have never been a straight A's student during my nursing program. I struggled so much during the first semester (I transferred from a community college to a university for the BSN program) and worked so hard to improve my GPA from 2.9 to 3.5 upon graduation. English is not my first language so I can assure you that I missed so many questions from nursing exams due to vocabulary issues. My point is that if I can pass NCLEX, so will you! You need to start this whole journey by having faith in yourself first and I'm sure you'll make it!
I spent 4-5 weeks to study for NCLEX. I studied roughly 8hours a day (many breaks in between), 6 days a week, and 1 day completely off from the study.
Study resources and materials:
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UWorld (of course): first off, I love UWorld because I have learned so much from its nursing content and the way how it nurtures your critical thinking skills as a future nurse. I started off with a few quizzes a day (20-30 questions a quiz) for the first week and then practice 2 x 60q Qbanks a day until the end. I have learned that many people easily thought UWorld questions are similar to NCLEX questions. From my experience, UWorld questions are different from real-life NCLEX questions! NCLEX questions are less wordy compared to UWorld, answer options are more straight forward and probably less tricky. UWorld helps your brain learn how to pick up clues from the questions or patient scenarios to find out the best answer. NCLEX questions could be challenging if they ask you about the topic that you're not familiar with. I highly recommend practice on Uworld QBank to help yourself familiarize with critical thinking and learn more about different conditions from the rationales. But do NOT assume that you'll see similar type of questions in NCLEX test.
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Hurst Now Plus: my school offered a great discount on this product, that's why I also spent $$$ on another material beside UWorld. Hurst Review videos are GREAT because they help you to understand and build a concrete foundation of the knowledge of many basic conditions (Fluids & Electrolytes, Cardiac, Renal, Respiratory, Endocrine, Neuro, Maternity, etc.). So if you think you can't recall many conditions from nursing school and need to refresh your memories from the beginning of the program, this is a great resource! I solely focused on the Core Content review for the first week together with their practice questions, then started on UWorld after the Hurst review.
I also practice on
NurseAchieve during the last 2 weeks since they offered free 30-day trial (not sure if still active, you can look upon their Fb page link https://www.facebook.com/NurseAchieve/). They have a computer-adaptive test format that is very similar to NCLEX (based on the difficulty level of the questions), the rationales are as detailed as UWorld. I also used
Saunder book (8th edition) to read about other nursing topics that less frequently asked such as Ethical/Legal, Laws, Evidence-based practice (yes, I was asked about Evidence-based practice twice during my NCLEX exam). I listened to a few topics from
Mark's audios - link
http://www.cold-clutches.com/the-real-original-free-mark-klimek-nclex-review-audio-downloads/ (mostly while I'm driving or tired from reading}, I would recommend the Prioritization topic.
I hope this is helpful to you. All the best wishes!
edited by on 7/1/2020
edited by on 7/1/2020
edited by on 7/2/2020
Thank you and congratulations!!! Your thoughtful message is truly comforting!