Are you tired of all those all-nighters trying to cram for the big test in the morning just to come up short of your goals again and again? Well, as Trey Parker discusses in this article, there’s a way to avoid those sleepless nights while actually improving your understanding of the concepts that will not only help you ace the tests but become a better practitioner in the process. Read on to find out how concept maps could help you see the “trees amidst the forest.”
We’ve all been there. It’s the night before the exam, and you are scrambling, zooming through your notes at a million miles an hour, scouring the internet for any assistance you can find. You’re already three Red Bulls in, and the clock shows 4 AM, which is extraordinarily unfortunate because the exam is at 8 AM. If you weren’t religious, you are now as you reach upward for any divine assistance and grasp for any supernatural aid. You finally call it quits and flail yourself on your bed with the hopes of obtaining any form of rest, only to have your alarm clock go off less than 30 minutes later. At this point, you look deep within and tell yourself: There has to be another way.
Spoiler Alert: It changed everything for me
One of the professors I had for my first nursing class, pathophysiology, introduced me to the idea of making concept maps as a studying technique. At first, I thought that it was ridiculous. It seemed convoluted and confusing. And so, for the first couple of weeks, I ignored his suggestions and used the study techniques I had adapted from previous pre-req courses一which mainly consisted of memorization and lacked any formal study routine. I had no issue with my study habits (or lack thereof) until we took our first ten-question quiz, which consisted of NCLEX-style questions. I scored 2/10, which, for a 4.0 student prior to entering the course, rattled me to my core. At this point, I realized that something had to change with my study routines and exam preparations. Long story short, I decided to give concept maps a try. Spoiler alert: It changed everything for me.
Concept mapping is a strategy where you can link core concepts together with their clinical manifestations, diagnostics, therapies, and nursing interventions; it is sort of like a one-stop shop for all things related to a specific pathology or core pathology. This is where you have multiple disease processes built on the same core pathology, such as anemia, which can include iron deficiency anemia, pernicious anemia, and folic acid anemia. There are four benefits of doing concept maps that I would like to highlight below.
Understanding the Material
One of the most beneficial aspects of making concept maps is that it leads you to understand the material instead of simply memorizing it. This is especially helpful because, if you haven’t figured it out already, NCLEX-style questions are written in a way that tests whether you understand the material. The questions presuppose you have learned the material and are ready to analyze, interpret, and apply the material to patient scenarios. Concept maps tell you the story of a pathology. It tells you how a disease starts, how it happens, what it looks like, and how you treat it. This understanding of the material helps you to answer those pesky “select all that apply” and “priority” questions that nursing students fear the most.
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Linking Concepts Together
A core function of concept maps is linking concepts together. For example, if you are creating a concept map of appendicitis, you are creating a map that is compiling the concepts of inflammation, infection, and nutrition and elimination (fancy jargon referring to the normal physiology of absorbing and breaking down nutrition. This involves the entire GI tract and some metabolic processes.) Why is this important? Well, if you understand the normal function of the GI tract, and you understand the fundamental concepts of inflammation and infection, then it is very easy to understand how these concepts relate to one another. Furthermore, if you understand the pathology well, then it is much easier to understand how you treat the pathology with therapies and nursing interventions. Concept maps help you to link everything together and not see individual chapters, but instead, co-influencing concepts.
You Can See the Bigger Picture
Concept maps help you see the bigger picture. Sometimes, you can get very deep into the weeds of a certain pathology, and sometimes, especially in nursing school, that’s what we have to do. However, concept maps give you the opportunity to “see the trees amidst the forest.” They allow you, the student, to keep in mind how this specific pathology is influencing the larger concept of perfusion or oxygenation/gas exchange as a whole.
If You Make It You Will Remember It
Your concept map is yours and yours alone. Whenever you make something yourself, your brain is going to remember it better. If you make your own concept map, your brain is going to remember it much easier and for longer. If I look at a concept map that I made two years ago, it takes only seconds for my brain to say, “Oh yeah, I remember making this…” I always encourage students to not use other people’s notes, not just for academic integrity, but because your brain didn’t make them and so they may not be nearly as effective.
For me personally, concept maps have changed the way I study for good. I went from really struggling in nursing school to making terrific grades and tutoring incoming nursing students. Plus, you can make concept maps for almost any subject in nursing school: fundamentals, health assessment, pharmacology, community, research, nursing leadership, etc. This makes it a very effective study tool that you can use throughout your nursing education.
ADPIE Series
One of the newest resources from Osmosis is the nursing (ADPIE) series. Each video in this series uses realistic patient scenarios to teach clinical pathologies, their associated nursing care, and most importantly, how they are all related. This can be exceptionally helpful to see how the pathophysiology relates to the clinical symptoms or how the nursing diagnoses influence the nursing interventions used in realistic patient scenarios. Think of these videos as extended concept maps! This method of studying can not only help your understanding but also decrease the amount of study time necessary to master the material. Click here to see this type of learning in action!
Let’s go back to that beginning picture. I am a firm believer that concept maps make nursing students’ lives much easier. Why? Well, because it is working smarter and not harder. Instead of learning 20 different pathologies in isolation of one another, you are learning how 20 different pathologies influence a single concept (i.e. perfusion, oxygenation, elimination, etc.) In this way, these pathologies are linked together, which makes it much easier to find similarities in clinical manifestations, therapies, and nursing interventions.
When coupled with effective time management and study routines, concept maps can put your learning progress on the fast track to understand and apply the information, which is the entire premise of NCLEX-style questions. Because of concept maps, I said goodbye to those late-night disasters before exams. I said goodbye to studying for hours and hours and hours on end. Because of concept maps, my learning is streamlined, efficient, and effective, and I believe that with concept maps, your learning can be streamlined as well.
About Trey
Trey Parker is a senior-level BSN nursing student at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University. Trey’s nursing interests are pediatric intensive care, research, and education. When Trey isn’t at school or the hospital, you can find him spending time with his friends or serving in his community.
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