How to Study for the NCLEX-RN

Hi everyone and welcome we're so glad to have you here today we're going to give everyone a few minutes to kind of get logged in get settled get in your comfy chair we've got a lot to talk about today and Paige and I are so excited to have you here so as you're joining here and we're going to give everybody a few minutes I see our numbers going up which is excellent feel free to pop in that chat we'd love to hear where you're from even where in your healthcare Learning Journey you're at are you getting ready to graduate are you within a few weeks of taking the NCLEX or do you have a bit longer to go please let us know we'd love to hear from you also feel free during the webinar itself to utilize that chat feature to pop in any questions you might have along the way for page and I it's kind of I find it a little challenging to both check the chat and kind of speak at the same time so we might not get to questions right during the webinar itself but there should be some time at the end where then we can kind of look through those questions and try to address as very many as we absolutely can because we're like here for you here to answer your questions and want to make this as useful as it can be for you so yeah I'm going to give it just another minute or two I see couple people more joining so please feel free to let us know where you're from and where on your healthcare Learning Journey you are and just so you know too this webinar will be recorded so I think it's osmosis.com events but I know the link will be posted within the chat to let you know and then the webinar should be up and live within about a week or so it takes a little bit of time to get it up on the website but that's where you can find both this webinar as well as all of our past webinars from the prior months and years you can check and see what's out in our webinar library right let me just give it one more minute here and we'll get started a welcome from Northampton oh I had a I have a relative who just retired from that school at Bethlehem PA so happy to have you here I'm semi familiar with the area welcome you're just beginning your nursing program wow how lovely well welcome to all of you so happy to have you all here I'm going to be very cognizant of your valuable time and I'm going to go ahead and get started now so hi again hi Welcome to our webinar today about how to study for the NCLEX RN my name is Liz Lucas I am the senior content manager for nursing here with osmosis and I've been with the company for about three years prior to that I taught pre-licensure nursing and then I've been a bedside nurse for quite a long time spending the majority of my time an inpatient and outpatient oncology I'm located in the United States outside of Baltimore Maryland which is about an hour or so from Washington DC and Paige I'll let you introduce yourself then too thanks Liz my name is Paige Randall I have also been with osmosis for just about three years in this upcoming May I am in the United States as well I'm in North Carolina in the City of Raleigh I have been a nurse for over 10 years and I've had a little bit of clinical background in cardiac and emergency nursing and then I also have done Nursing education at the associate degree and bachelor's degree levels and now I'm currently a full-time student at Duke University trying to get my nursing PhD thank you Liz oh yes thank you so much for being here with us you just have so much knowledge in this area so we're lucky to have you here with us today plus you're my webinar buddy at this point we've done a couple of these now okay so let's get started then here's a quick review of our agenda for today we're going to cover what is the NCLEX and who should take it we're going to go over some of our pass rate statistics and this is kind of new hot off the press information we're going to talk about just some general facts about the NCLEX that way we're all on the same page and then we're going to go ahead and dive into really what the true purpose of this webinar is which is getting into some of the is interesting maybe unique maybe you've tried them maybe you haven't but we have some study tips and resources for you I did want to link right away to the NCLEX test plan because that is really just a wealth of information as you prepare even if you're quite far even a number of years away from your NCLEX exam or you're getting ready to take it within the next few weeks this is so much information for you and it's really quite easy to read it's kind of written in a language I think most of us could understand it tells you exactly what to expect as far as taking the exam what's on the exam even how the exam has been prepared so if you're looking for something to kind of like answer a lot of your questions and even ease some of your fears because you just there's a lot of unknowns as you're getting ready to take the NCLEX that's a perfect resource for that okay let's start about what is the NCLEX it?s an acronym that stands for National Council licensure examination we sure do love our acronyms in nursing and it is owned and developed as well as administered by the National Council state boards of nursing which we shorten of course to ncsbn so if you see ncsbn that's National Council State Boards of Nursing and they're the governing body that distributes the NCLEX examination today specifically we're really concentrating a bit more on the NCLEX RN which is geared towards those wanting and having studied for their registered nurse but there is a version of the exam that's for practical nursing learners who are preparing to take them their P exam PN exam to get their PN license while there's a lot of overlap between what LPN's and RNs do there's some distinct differences too especially when it comes to their scope of practice that's why there's two different examinations in two different ways that these awesome Healthcare members are prepared so what does the NCLEX do it measures if a test taker has the competencies needed to provide safe and effective patient care as an entry-level nurse so essentially this test is deeming you safe and appropriate go out into the world and care for the patients that we have in front of us each state then will give you so each state in the United States accepts those results from the NCLEX and then they're the ones your State Board of Nursing for example I'm in Maryland so I didn't actually take the NCLEX in Maryland I took it in a different state but if I were to take it in Maryland the Maryland State Board of Nursing would then accept the results and if it was a pass would issue me my nursing license that's kind of how that process works there okay so taking the NCLEX it is administered using something called a computerized adaptive test of course we have another acronym for that we shorten that as a c a cat exam in using a cat exam it means that the computer system you're taking this test on is constantly after each and every question you answer selecting another item or test question we use those words interchangeably that matches your ability so you're not going to go from a question that's quite simple to one that's extremely complex in the very next question with every single question the computer system is evaluating your level it also estimates your ability with each question until it is able to come to a pass or fail decision that won't happen until you've at least answered the minimum number of questions though that's when the possibility of the computerized system is saying that with quite certainty you are a test taker who is passing meeting our Le minimum level requirements to pass this exam we were unable to meet the minimum requirements and are failing this exam since it's done using this computerized adaptive test that means you have to take the exam at a Pearson view testing center those testing centers are located across the country as well as outside of the United States if you're perhaps an international learner the NCLEX examination certainly in Canada as well they're located and what Pearson view does is make sure that the exam stays extremely secure these test questions don't get out and it makes sure that the person taking the exam is who they say they are they don't want Paige taking the exam and saying that she's Liz Lucas and she's passing but Liz Lucas really wasn't going to pass that's not going to happen at a Pearson View Center and they have a lot of security measures to ensure that the test remains really secure including things like checking your license and I think there's even a Palm scan if I remembering correctly but again the ncsbn website is just a wealth of information we'll give you all of that information so the minimum length of a test is 85 questions of these 85 questions oh and it goes all the way up to 150 so you might get anywhere between 85 and 150 questions and of whatever number of questions be it 85 or 150 or somewhere in between 15 of those questions will actually be unscored testing items so the ncsbn is constantly adding new questions to the exam but they must make sure that first of all they're Fair they're appropriately leveled and that they're scoring the way they suspect them to score so they test the items first to ensure it's a really super valid question before it gets added to someone's actual exam and counted towards whether they're passing or failing that exam the maximum length of a test is 5 hours long unless you have a special accommodation which you absolutely can learn more about on ncsbn or NCLEX website so the test will come to an end once it reaches 150 questions or five hours or the exam system the C has been able to make a past fail decision that's when the test will close a common kind of like misconception or misnomer is that if you are getting close to that 150 number that you're going to fail the exam but that is just truly not the case you could get to the whole way to 150 and the exam decides like yes after these 150 questions we've realized that you are above passing level you get that passing score and you're able to receive your NCLEX same thing only getting the minimum number of questions just because your test ends at 85 doesn't mean you necessarily passed or fail one of those two is true but it's not more likely to be one or the other and that's kind of a really common misconception I hear from a lot of my nursing students let's talk a little bit about what is on the examination so one way the NCLEX is categorized is by cognitive level you might have heard some of this in your nursing programs but perhaps not and that's okay but in general whenever you're receiving any sort of quiz question in your nursing program or test question the faculty member is pretty likely to categorize this question as a remember understand apply analyze evaluate or create questions so remembering might just be can I just literally recall the fact that's all I can do I can recall it that's all I can do with it but if we're asking you to understand something well just as the word kind of implies it's like okay now are you understanding like the meaning behind the facts you've memorized apply is can I take the information that I've learned and apply that to maybe even a real patient scenario so not only do I have my cardiac enzymes memorize but I understand what they mean and I have a patient with this these symptoms and I can connect these things all together analyze evaluate create so anywhere from apply above those are most likely the range of your NCLEX questions the NCLEX is really designed especially in recent years to ensure that you're able to critically think and analyze and use clinical judgment so of course you're needing to at that point apply information and not just recall facts the other way the NCLEX is categorized is by something that's called client needs categories and I have that chart there that gives you the breakdown so it's broken down into four major categories and then some of those categories have subcategories underneath them so the first one is safe and effective Care Management and that NCLEX test plan will actually describe really thoroughly what all is under that category and even give you some examples of questions that you might find under that category but within safe and effective hair environment you have management of care which will make up anywhere from 15 to 21% of your exam and safety and infection control which can make up anywhere from 10 to 16% of your exam then is health promotion and maintenance which is 6 to 12% cycle social Integrity which is also 6 to 12 under that we have physiological integrity and that one has the most number of subcategories so we have basic care and comfort which is 6 to 12% pharmacological and parental therapies which is 13 to 19 reduction of risk potential which is 9 to 15 in physiological adaptation which is 11 to 177% and again you can find really what all of those categories mean and a breakdown of those categories on that NCLEX test plan which is available on the website all right let's add to this a little bit so we have our taxonomy levels where we know we're probably going to be getting apply and above questions we have our NCLEX test plan categories but you might have heard that nearly a year ago now it was April 1st of 2023 the NCLEX got kind of like a pretty big update and facelift and that's in that way they've added this clinical judgment measurement model as well as new question types and case studies so the clinical judgment measurement model is something that was developed by the ncsbn as a framework to measure clinical judgment in test takers we certainly know that one of the highest risks especially from new nurses new Physicians and even experienced nurses and Physicians is patient errors due to the high number of patient errors the ncsbn found it necessary to kind of rethink the exam and make sure that nurses who are entering clinical practice are prepared and ready to make clinical decisions for their patients so to do that it came up with a way to measure clinical judgment this model is Big you probably can't see it super well on your screen but there's definitely a lot more information I keep referring you but it really is so much information on the website so according to ncsbn clinical judgment is the observed outcome of critical thinking and decision making it is an iterative process meaning you don't just make one single decision for your patient and say you're good to go and kind of walk away no that's not how that works you're trying something evaluating that seeing how if the patient responds well or negatively adding something to it trying something else working with the patient to make sure you come up with a plan that works for both them and you and his best so that's what iterative means it's kind of constantly changing and evolving so it's an iterative process that uses nursing knowledge to observe and assess presenting situations identify a prioritized client concern and generate the best possible evidence-based situations in order to deliver safe client care now there's several layers to this clinical judgment model you can kind of see layer one two three it goes up so let's start at the top that top layer of the cjmm clinical judgment measurement model because we love acronyms so cjmm that's our broadest kind of layer so we're all the way at the top there and that's the fact that your client has a need and that need must be met that need might be pain that need might be nausea that need might be confusion they have some sort of need you need to meet their need using a clinical decision so how do we get from patient client has a need to I need to make a decision for that patient what are the steps that go in in the middle there so layer one to do that you must use clinical judgment that's kind of that single bar AC cross here that says clinical judgment Layer Two is that clinical judgment involves forming hypotheses refining those hypotheses evaluating your client's outcomes and that process might start and restart several times like I said that iterative component until the desired outcomes are achieved layer three here's like the gold the golden layer this is what we really need to know if you've not taken anything away thus far about the clinical judgment model let's really hone in on layer three because these are the cognitive aspects of the clinical decision making and it is the layer that the NCLEX questions are directly tied to so let's break down this layer a little bit it is recognize cu's analyze Q's prioritize hypotheses generate Solutions take actions and evaluate outcomes those go in order those are things those are steps in a process so you're going to recognize cues let's maybe talk about a scenario for this let's think okay so you have a client that you're recognize you're taking care of a client you walk into their room in the morning and you recognize some things about them they're wincing in pain they seem to be guarding their abdomen and you've just checked their very recent Vital Signs and their pulse rate is elevated so you're recognizing things there like okay these are kind of like not this patient's normal this is not like normal findings I would categorize these as abnormal findings I've just walked in then you're analyzing these cues so what might these cues relate to well I've checked my client's history before walking into the room and I know that yesterday they had an abdominal surgery so perhaps I need more information but perhaps my cues are related to this abdominal surgery I'm then going to prioritize my hypotheses so out of what's going on what am I most concerned about when I see someone who's guarding an elevated pulse that might all directly be related to pain but I would probably need a little more information I'm actually going to prioritize likely that pulse because what if they have an infection and that's why the pulse is going up then I'm going to generate some solutions then take action on those Solutions so perhaps the action is they actually are just in pain I check the wound it looks good there's no inflammation around it just a normal surgery cool incision so I think they're just in pain I check the chart they have some PRN or as needed pain medication ordered it's within an amount of a time that they're able to get that dose again so that would be my solution I take action by going to my med cart appropriately drawing up that medication safely checking the patient's armband to make sure I'm giving the right Med at the right time at the right dose to the right person then I administer it and then I'm going to finally evaluate those outcomes so how did my patient do let's say it was an intravenous medication I gave I go back in the room about 15 to 30 minutes later is their pain level lower if they've been able to rate their pain for me has it been unchanged is it actually higher now I'm doing this reiterative process so perhaps their pain really hasn't changed what can I try next some repositioning some ice if that's indicated other things other pain medications perhaps or a higher dose might be warranted so you're constantly re-evaluating then we finally have layer four this layer is what's adding the context because gosh if only we can kind of practice in this beautiful nursing vacuum where we have all the supplies and all the time and all the resources and all the knowledge we could ever need to take care of any of our patients but that's not the real life so perhaps there's time pressure for you as the nurse maybe you have another Med du in another room and another patient's calling you all at the same time maybe you're kind of have a bit of a lack of resources perhaps pay medication is ordered but it's not available on your unit at this very moment so what are you going to do if that happens maybe you're not super familiar with the surgical procedure that the patient had there's a bit of a knowledge Gap there so there could be any number of million different things but that kind of adds in the context in Prior versions of the NCLEX that context piece was missing but now that's built in there so and then the bottom is just the nursing process as a whole which is really serves as a foundation for this whole model that seems like a lot of information and that is a lot of information but thankfully here at osmosis we're getting ready to release a series of videos that exactly follows this clinical judgment measurement model using clients with various medical situations so you'll be able to follow along as the nurse is going through the clinical judgment model to make decisions and care for their patients those aren't out yet but they're soon to come they're coming this spring so I expect them coming soon okay and let's give you some good news here this is I'm really excited to share this good news because here we have the statistics from the ncsbn on us educated NCLEX test takers so each quarter the ncsbn releases the previous quarter's pass rate results and it's interesting to me to compare from year to year because it tells us kind of over time how are testers doing on this examination and also we just know from historical data that some quarters and a quarter is January February March that's the first quarter April May June that's the next quarter so every three months is a the quarter of the year we know historically that certain quarters students tend to perform worse than other quarters that it does not mean that if you were to take your exam during that quarter where students tend to perform the worst you can see in from this chart that that is October to December because if you think about when students graduate there's not like a huge number of graduates coming in right before that like September students are most students are typically graduating either in the springtime so May or June or in the winter time around December or January that means just in the months after that there's going to be a high number of test takers that are taking this exam that have just graduated school and that's kind of The Sweet Spot you want to take this the exam relatively quickly in order to increase your best chance for success but if your school graduates at a different time or your particular situation did not allow you to take it during one of those high- performing quarters it doesn't mean you'll fail this is just looking at overall statistics here so let's compare some numbers here and let's remember too that next gen was released April 1st of 202 uh3 so we can see that in April to June we've had a dramatic shift in pass rate in this graph ft stands for our first time test takers and R stands for our repeat test takers so in 20122 before NextGen came out a year before NextGen came out our full-time or sorry first-time test takers the aage score or the average pass rate was 82.9% one year later after NGN was released that increased all the way up to 94.3 2% pass rate what a huge difference again if we look in July through September in 2022 for first-time test takers it was 78.2 whereas in 2023 it was 9.69 not going to read all the statistics here for you because this slide this presentation and this webinar will be made available to you but you can see that the overall pass rate has increased and that's also for repeat test takers too so in an ideal world you would pass on the very first attempt but I like to say there is no wrong journey to becoming a nurse and that is not everybody's Journey sometimes life and circumstances gets in the way and you're unable to pass on that first time you can see that from the general statistics that first-time test takers perform better than repeat test takers but that does not mean that you in particular will perform worse just because you're a repeat test taker nor does it mean that you in particular will fail if you have to repeat the test just means you have to work hard and that's okay you can work hard so I just want to give you the good news about the increase in Pass rates there's probably a lot to contribute to that for one thing like I said the exam changed so perhaps now that ncsbn and NCLEX exam is more accurately capturing students clinical judgment that's a good thing if the Pass rates are increasing that means that nursing students actually do really have this clinical judgment and are prepared to enter practice I think too since it was a brand new exam likely faculty and students prepared really super thoroughly it was a big unknown what was it going to be like when this exam released what was it going to do to pass raids so I think kind of that fear motivated a lot of people to study and work really hard and we were seeing the positive benefits of that okay oh so we're going to talk now about studying for the NCLEX and here we have kind of like a general breakdown of some of what we're going to talk about which is to determine your weakest areas that's a great starting point gathered your preferred resources consider your study environment and Paige is going to talk more about that select one or more study techniques we have some really interesting information about that plan your months weeks days and even hours and then evaluate your progress and with that I'm going to turn it on over to Paige thank you so much Liz that was a great review of the NCLEX and some of the different aspects to look forward to when you're taking the exam so I will be going through the list of kind of the study ideas and techniques that we thought were important when preparing yourself for the NCLEX exam so first on the list is determine your weak areas and what we mean by that is are there topics courses or concepts in school that maybe you struggled with for me personally that might be something like fluid and electrolytes I always had a tough time with that course in nursing school but it can also be you know things like microbiology or chemistry or maybe cardiac or respiratory something that you just never quit understood as well as you wanted to and then you can think on the flip side of things that really you understand well and clicked right away and that's a great way to begin your process of studying and reviewing because you don't necessarily need to review the things that you understand really well as much as you want to review the things you don't quite understand as well so focusing on these week areas can help you map out a plan of what you need to spend your time studying more and then once you've had this mapped out in your mind or written down or electronic you can tailor some practice tests to focus on material that you need to review more you can use different practice tests online or hard copy some examples of practice tests that you can download online are from Hesi Kaplan ATI Uworld you can certainly also do test questions on osmosis website and then if you're more of a hard copy person you can always get an NCLEX prep booklet or a review book from your local bookstore or online one that we recommend or think that is a good resource is Saunders comprehensive review for NCLEX exam and we like the notion of working smarter not harder so you want to focus on those weak areas and really make sure that the time you're spent studying is time that is really focused on the things you need to study more so weak areas rather than your strong areas it's not so much always about the time spent studying as how effectively your process and materials were in in that study process and we can go to the next slide about Gathering resources so we talked a little bit about some different resources on the previous slide but we'll go more in depth on the modalities that can be used use to study so first you can consider how you best learn so this might be something as simple as just reflecting on your time in school even back to high school or if you've done some other college courses or in nursing school do you learn best by reading do you learn best by listening do you learn best by doing things Hands-On and these can be really helpful tools when you're putting together your study schedule for the end CLX or even for a nursing school exam so consider some things different modalities that you might use such as audio this could be a nursing podcast or an audio book I actually used to have a CD that I would put on in my car but I don't know if many cars or computers have cd players anymore but you can definitely download things onto your phone as well there's also great videos on YouTube we have wonderful videos on our osmosis website as you all know there's also text so you can use textbooks or review sources such as encl prep books questions these can be questions from our website they can be questions from other sources and also hard copy or electronic one thing we want to mention too is we have all of these great and evolving artificial intelligence or AI resources now as great as that is and as exciting as that is you have to be you know critically evaluating the output that's coming from something like chat gpt if you're asking them to generate test questions for you or answers to questions so you are the expert so if you are unsure if something is sound or you know is correct or not you have to make sure that you're critically evaluating the output that's coming from those AI tools and then we also wanted to talk about our osmosis ultimate NCLEX RN study guide this is a free download on our website and I know our we're going to be sharing a link in the chat for this ultimate NCLEX RN guide this is a guide to help you learn how to study for and pass the NCLEX RN it reviews The Format and what to expect from the encl as well of types of questions and I know some of you in the chat were asking what does a nextgen question look like well this guide can show you as well as the NCLEX test plan can also show you some examples and also our NCLEX Ultimate Guide reviews some great study techniques for the NCLEX as well so make sure you download it it's free next we recommend preparing your environment this is something that's going to be different for everybody because everybody studies best in their own personalized environment but here are some trip tips and tricks that we suggest we want we want to suggest having it be clutter-free and what we mean by that is try to eliminate as many distractions as possible so perhaps put your phone on do not disturb or airplane mode and same thing on your computer if you are somebody who has you know iMessage synced up to your computer or notifications from your email you can put those notifications on pause or at least silence them while you're doing your studying if you can find an area that's quiet and that's not always easy for people with families or pets or maybe living in you know busy cities too so do your best to try to find a quiet area and you might have to go outside of your home to do this go to the library or maybe go to a friend or family member's house if you just can't find somewhere that's quiet you can purchase noise cancelling headphones and if you're one of those people who likes to study with some background noise like white noise or music that's perfectly fine to you can grab some headphones and listen to that too while you study and you want to make sure you have easy access to your material so a great way to begin the study process even before you start reviewing is just to get yourself organized and that might be just organizing your hard C papers or binders or creating folders on your computer you know this is what I want to study week one this is what I want to study week two and then that way you're not looking around for a long time to try to find resources you can also help your studying by eating nutritious snacks and hydrating with water you want to make sure to limit your caffeine intake even though that nice cup of coffee might be great in the beginning of your study session having a lot of caffeine can always contribute to some jitteriness or nervousness too so you just want to make sure you're hydrating and you have a good balance and then nutritious snacks that are high in protein rather than full of carbohydrates such as nuts or fruits maybe cheeses and then of course making sure you're drinking water throughout the process as well and then sometimes it's good to switch it up and that might be just moving around your house or your study positioning you know going from a sitting to a seated position or sitting to a standing position and also it might just be you know every hour I'm going to take a 5 minute to 10 minute break and just walk around or I'm going to you know maybe take a longer break in the middle and walk outside you know something to just break up that monotony you got music sorry I muted myself with the space bar it's my first time on Zoom so there are some study techniques I'll review these very briefly I don't want to take up a ton of time but they will be available in that link at the bottom of the slide and also in in the recording of our webinar too I and you can always do your own research so just like we like to have you switch up your location you can switch up your study techniques too and here are some just several examples that we thought were interesting so one the first one is the sq3r method so it stands for survey which means skimming the information noting headings subheadings images and charts next cue for question where you formulate your own questions about what you do and don't know already and what the information is telling you and then the three Rs are read recite and review where you first read the most pertinent information or confusing sections or if you just need a full refresh the entire chapter or information recite is where you'll summarize what you've read in your own words and then review where you look at the material later on maybe a day or two days later and continue to review it next we have some called be the teacher and this is exactly what it sounds you will teach the material either to yourself or somebody else and you can write this down hard copy or do it electronically you can even record yourself talking about it and then you'll review to check for any errors and then rewrite anything that maybe needs to be corrected next is spaced practice and repetition which I will actually skip over for now because we're going to talk about it more in depth on a few more slides in the future and then there's the lightener system this is one of my favorites because I love flash cards this is where you'll have a few flash card boxes or you can just use rubber bands to separate flash cards into piles so what you'll do is you'll create your own flashcards on a particular topic and put them in one box or one pile then you'll test yourself on the material if you get it right then the flash card will go to box or pile two and if not it'll stay in box one and you'll continue to do this until you have three to four flash card flashcard boxes are piles so maybe things that you know really well things that took you a little bit of time things that you got partially right then things that you just totally didn't know and then eventually you will start reviewing the material or the flash cards that you got wrong and then hopefully you will start moving those down the line back to box one in the correct pile so you'll just keep doing that over time there's also color coding which many people do automatically this is where you use a highlighter or crayon or you can use any sort of you know colored utensil and write down key points and highlight and organize Topics by color Studies have shown that color can improve memory in warm colors like your yellows and oranges can create a positive and motivating learning environment and it might be an organization system for you as well you know maybe things in red are things you don't know and things in green are things you know really well and all of that in between there's also mind mapping which is great for visual Learners this is where you organize information into a diagram and then maybe the topic in the middle is the topic that's overarching that you're studying so something like congestive heart failure and then you can draw little arms coming out of that congestive heart failure Circle or Square and then talk about maybe things like symptoms of congestive heart failure or pharmaceutical treatments for that condition and then you can make that mind map as big or as little as detailed as you want and then lastly we have something called gamifying your study which Dr Lucas is actually an expert in that was her dissertation this is where you add game elements like points or rewards in a non-game context like studying of course the ultimate reward of this whole process is your nursing license but it may be beneficial to build in small and realistic goals throughout the way try to think of things that are fulfilling to you personally like maybe some time with friends or an hour spent with your dog or maybe even a special experience like going out to dinner or movie here's a screenshot from our wonderful osmosis website and I know we'll be sharing a link in the chat too we have some learning science videos that actually outline different study techniques and you can watch these short videos to learn about some different ways to switch up your studying I'll focus on two that I thought were interesting on the next two slides but as you can see on the website there are you know a handful that you can choose from so the first is called memory palaces and we do have a video on our website about the study technique A Memory Palace is a type of memory technique where you imagine a physical location to help you remember more abstract information so people tend to remember or imagine in their mind a familiar space like their bedroom or kitchen or maybe their backyard and then they can kind of create characters or symbols in that space that's familiar to help you remember certain topics or concepts so I know in the video on our osmosis website they talk about the characters of Chronicles of Narnia and how they represent different components of pancreatitis there's also things like up on the slide here sounds like and looks like so first you might go with a sounds like for example the word papule kind of sounds like the words Papa and mule so you can imagine excited new dad you know the popup riding around on his baby mule so these are just some fun little ways to remember things another trick is to go with looks like for example a parietal cell may look like a fried egg so when you're drawing this the notes in your notebook or you're thinking in your head of these topics you use these memory palaces next on our website is a video about space repetition space repetition is based on the idea of the spacing effect which states that information is better remembered if it's studied over multiple study sessions with increasingly long intervals between each session rather than studying the same information in one huge chunk or one intensive session so as you can see on the graph here over time you not only learn the information better but you retain it for longer so that means that over time you might be able to recall things that you might not have if you just studied in big one big time consuming chunk if you do it a little bit over time you're more likely to remember it and remember it in a quality way next we recommend creating a study schedule and a study schedule we think in our personal opinion is crucial to your success because it really helps organize when and how you're going to study so start with making a calendar electronic or you know physically and you want to put your test date whether it be the NCLEX or a nursing exam on that calendar and once you are done putting the exam date on there you want to put in things like appointments trips classes work just things that you're automatically going to have to do on that schedule then when you can see more of what time you have free and what time you don't have free then you can start putting in that studying time that's dedicated to reviewing materials and you want to consider things too like do you do better studying in the morning are you Night Owl are there days of the week that you know you're just really tired after work and you want to be realistic so maybe after a 12-hour work shift it's not feasible to study for three hours you know and then eventually you have a wonderful study schedule that you've created and you also want to make sure you're scheduling in time to rest and relax and then the last week or two before your test you want to just review material and not start learning something brand new from scratch and then the day of the test or maybe even the day before give your brain a break and take some time to relax and something you can do too is find an accountability buddy with our wonderful we know that you all can serve as account accountability buddies for each other but this can also be friends classmates parents spouses or partners and this is somebody who can hold you accountable to your study schedule and encourage you to study even when you're not feeling like you want to and then we also are going to put in our chat a link to our page where you can watch some previous webinars that we've recorded about time management study habits and we have a great one that actually details the NCLEX next gen and talks about the types of questions on the exam and we also have some wonderful blogs too I think another thing I really like about the idea of a study schedule is like have you ever sat down and you just have like decision fatigue like you sit down you're like what am I even going to what am I supposed to do what should I work on Where do I even start but if you've already sat down and determined that in a in a day and in a space in a time where you're feeling really motivated and organized and you kind of have it all laid out in your head if you've taken the time to write that even when you like have a day where you're like goodness gracious I'm not even sure where to start if you have it written down you're like okay I can at least start let me open up the page I said I was going to work on or open up that module or that osmosis video I had planned to watch today it's like okay that that just removes one of those small barriers that I tend to run into in my own time yeah definitely and then you have the wonderful task of checking something off your list which really gives me a lot of Joy more than it should okay the last step in our study process is evaluation and if you'll remember from the nursing process or the clinical judgment measurement model that's also the last step in both of those models so evaluation is so important this is where you'll re-evaluate your progress every few weeks or if you want to do it more often or less often that's up to you but you can do this using a practice end NCLEX exam or just a few practice questions to see what you're really learning or not learning as well and then you can adjust your study schedule to continue to focus on the weakest areas and maybe reach out for some extra support along the way if there's things that you're not quite understanding and people that you can reach out to would be faculty classmates friends you know fellow As and then if you want to too you can always hire an NCLEX tutor which do exist depending on your area you can look them up online and then we just want to say that at osmosis we believe in you and we know that you're going to pass your encl we're so proud of you and we just want to say also thank you so much for joining the webinar and for participating in the Q?A we will have some time to answer some questions now but just to make sure that I mentioned this before we start answering questions we are also offering a free two Tri trial of osmosis and the link will be put in the chat it'll be osmosis.org invite whcc qv3 but like I said it'll be put in the chat so you can access a free two trial of our wonderful services and products okay I think we have some time for questions sorry Liz I interrupted you no not at all and I do see I was just scrolling if you saw me look to the side I was scrolling for questions and we do have some questions but one thing I do want to clarify is that Paige used yet another acronym ONSA a few times and that and for those of you who don't know we have an ambassador program at osmosis and I believe the name is changing but for our nursing students in particular it's the osmosis nursing student ambassador so ONSA program and they're able to first of all join this amazing community of fellow nursing students from around the globe at this Point and get support from each other also get a bit of mentorship are in also Community with our medical students as well so get a lot of that interdisciplinary knowledge which is so important and then also get to help contribute to kind of the future of Osmosis we ask for their feedback a lot and so real nursing students and real time are giving us feedback about what we're putting on our osmosis platform I believe applications I don't know if they're live or not but look for an O application OHLI application we call that if you if that at all sounds interesting to you the other thing I meant to say is I kind of got so excited about the clinical judgment measurement model layer three that I forgot to say where you would see that on the NCLEX exam so let me spend just a minute explaining that and then we'll get into the questions too because where that layer three comes into play is on your case study questions so on every single person's exam whether it's the minimum or the maximum you're going to get three case studies and each case study has six questions contained within it and those go by those steps of layer three of the clinical judgment measurement model starting with recognized cues so you'll have a client scenario you might have a chart to click through with vital signs or intake and output or a progress node you might have a couple components you can click on a patient's electronic medical record then you'll need to answer the six corresponding questions so the first question will relate to recognize cues what are you recognizing and are you accurately recognizing what you should be on to analyze and so forth in addition there'll be about 10% of free standing or Standalone is the wording they use clinical judgment measurement model questions that aren't tied to is a case study and aren't tied to any other questions they just are standing alone there so when I said that with each and every single question the computer system the cat evaluates how you're doing that is true except for within the span of those six clinical judgment measurement model case study questions it waits until those six questions are complete and then was like okay well how did this test taker do with those six questions because it can't split up the questions within a case study I just wanted to make sure I said that okay but we do have a few questions and we have some time to answer some of these so one of the first questions I see on our list it says is it true that it's a pretty half vomit out test and I'm going to assume what that means is kind of like are you just regurgitating information for about half the test would you think that that's what that question means Paige I think so yeah and so I would say the answer is no the vast majority of your test you will not be kind of regurgitating or just displaying your ability to memorize information in fact I would say likely for every single question you get on the NCLEX RN exam you will be given even if it's just a short mini patient scenario so you're caring for a patient who has this condition these are the symptoms this was what's going on here's how it's changed there is going to be some component where you're going to have to at least apply information that you've learned our next question is timetable for NCLEX Preparation during nursing school so what is the timetable I'm guessing they're kind of wanting to know when should I start studying and I'm going to see if your answer differs from mine but I'm going to give like maybe the least popular answer in the whole wide world that's to say that really this is such a nursing faculty member thing to say but your studying does start the moment you enter nursing school or at least your nursing courses I know some programs don't start with like your nursing courses you start with prerequisites but your studying does start there whether or not you're fully conscious of it your faculty are preparing you to not only pass the UN CL but also to be amazing caretakers and that process starts in your very first nursing course but when it comes to truly sitting down and creating that study schedule that timetable for yourself that kind of like hardcore studying that's going to differ depending on a lot of factors the amount of time you have when your exam is scheduled how you typically study all of those things but in a to be totally in a realistic scenario that probably is happening within the last few months to weeks before your exam that true kind of like very hardcore dedicated study time but certainly that final year of nursing school too is pretty commonly dedicated and getting you prepared for its preparing for the NCLEX do you agree with that totally agree yes and you know even if you're not formally studying for the NCLEX in nursing school studying for your unit exams is directly applicable to what will be you know on the NCLEX too so you're kind of studying you know twofold you're studying for your unit exams and then you're also studying for the encl because that's all the same material it's all Guided by the inkbox test plan like I feel like I look skipped a question here let me see if I can find the next one I see some people talking about our own osmosis questions we do have a variety of different question Styles oh one of my favorite features really on osmosis is our quiz Builder where you're able to kind of build yourself your quiz you can do that in a number of ways you can do that by going into a Content area say like oh I want to focus on Pediatrics or maternal newborn or adult ENT or one of the various kind of content areas pharmacology or you might say I want to focus on this area of the NCLEX test plan you can even combine these things and get a really specific quiz for yourself but I think we have oh goodness I forget the number of questions we have off the top of my head is it around 4,000 or we're nearing 4,000 style questions I think at this point so we do have a wide variety of questions oh you can also filter by question type so if you're like gosh darn if these select all that apply questions don't trip me up on my nursing exam let me practice some of these and a low stakes environment right no one's looking at your test results of for an osmosis quiz but the great thing that it does is gives you very detailed explanations and brief rationales for each of your options so you might answer a and the system says oh no actually no you got that one wrong it was B but why was a wrong why is B the correct answer the answer you should have selected and then a nice thorough kind of like overview of the whole question as a whole someone oh maybe you can do this page someone is wondering if we can repeat some of those resources we mentioned like and new world and stuff like that sure let me just go to their that slide okay and this obviously is not an all-inclusive list but some practice tests you could potentially take would be from Hesi from Kaplan from ATI and these are may be something that your school already offers or maybe something that you also need to pay for and some of the resources online may also be free so we're not specifically endorsing one over the other but you will have to be a judge of what works best for you and what you have access to or what you're willing to pay for to yeah and someone's asking related to that is there free like practice quizzes on some of them and I would say like oh you just need to kind of like deep dive and kind of explore and see what's available in each and talk to your classmates what's worked for them worked for people who have already taken it explore your options Google it you know like hey what are the reviews on this particular resource but also think about your own personal needs too how you know you prefer and like to study I think the most important thing is just make sure it's a very like reputable resourcing company and I think it's wonderful that there really is a number of great reputable trustworthy and excellent resources for students out there osmosis is one of them but you don't have to shop there you can kind of shop around too and I see that we're coming to the end so maybe we can fit in just one more question let me scroll down here how soon should I take the NCLEX exam after graduation do you have thoughts on that page I my answer is always the sooner the better with that being said I'm not saying the day after graduation so as a an example of myself and this is not for everybody I graduated in May and I took my exam in July so I felt like that was a good amount of time to study but I know people who took it in June or took it afterwards but over time typically you tend to forget things so if you can take it closer to your graduation time Point usually your memory recall will be better as opposed to waiting an extended period of time to take your NCLEX perfect yeah I totally agree with that Paige and yeah we're coming to the end of our webinar here I just wanted to thank everyone for taking the time to attend today like we mentioned that this webinar has been recorded and will be posted on osmosis.org events hopefully I'm saying that right in the next week or so good luck studying and have a great rest of your day thank you all thank ?Music? you helping current and future clinicians Focus learn retain and thrive