Welcome back to our Ask-a-Nurse corner! Not too long ago, a few of our learners asked, “How can one easily remember all the right values of the vital signs when checking a patient? Osmosis Nursing Content Manager, Kelsey Lafayette, DNP, ARNP, FNP-C, flew to rescue with her response.
Oof. Vital signs, lab values, and medications. The crux of every nursing student. Let me preface this by saying in the real world of nursing, you don’t need all these things memorized… though you will memorize them with time and experience.
Now the real world of nursing allows you to check your resources as much as you want, so if you’re allowed to use your resources, I always loved having a badge backer card on my ID with information I was struggling with, like pediatric vital signs or electrolyte ranges.
Unfortunately, I know nursing school instructors expect certain things to be memorized by their students. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, encouraging you to become familiar with these things and starting to work on putting them into your memory can help you care for your patients, because let’s be honest… you can’t look up every single thing, all the time.
While helpful, committing all these things to memory is difficult and exhausting.
So to help I would start with understanding your learning style…do you respond better to pictures? Colors? Written word? Once you know that, figure out a way to review whatever content you need to memorize in small chunks, every day.
For example, I learn best by seeing, especially with colors and designs. So, when I was trying to remember medications for NP boards, I used brightly colored index cards, wrote the drug names on the front of them, and all the info I needed to know on the back. I then taped these index cards on my wall in a specific design. I would walk by this wall multiple times every day, and as I did I would quiz myself. My house looked wild, but it worked.
When I took my boards, I could see the design of index cards in my head… I knew NRTIs were on a pink card, top right of the wall, and I could then recall the information I needed. Some other ideas can include listening to videos as you walk to class (Osmosis!?), quizzing a peer via text, or watching a video while on the treadmill.
Now, however you decide to learn is up to you, but ingesting the information daily in small, frequent chunks is what will help you commit things to memory. As much as every nursing student wants to cram… it, unfortunately, doesn’t work, and it’s not going to help. So, figure out your learning style and start taking small, frequent bites of material over time!
– Nurse Kelsey Kelsey Lafayette, DNP, ARNP, FNP-C is a Nursing Content Manager with Osmosis.
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