Nursing School Survival Guide

As a current nursing student, due to graduate this year, I wanted to offer some helpful resources, tips and tricks for all my fellow current and future nursing students. Here are some helpful things that got me to where I am:

Study, study, study. However that works best for you. If you don’t study well or have grazed through classes with minimal effort, hear me now, you need to learn how to study better. Nursing school is hard and is not for the weak or lazy so bust a move and learn.

Make flashcards and study guides for every exam and start on them as you learn the info. It is no good for anyone to cram all of your studying in right before the exam and by making studying materials as you go, it helps with retention of information.

Become friends with people in your class so you can form study groups, if that’s your thing, but also because you’ll need people to lean on to help you when the going gets tough.

Utilize your school tutors if you have them. Many times the tutors are students themselves who have gone through the classes you need help with and they are great sources for classified info on stuff.

Give yourself time for self-care. Nursing school can be stressful and busy, but if you don’t take care of yourself, you will struggle more. Trust me.

Make sure you are prepared the day before any clinical, simulation or lab day. It shows when you don’t know your stuff and you aren’t prepared and professors are less likely to be lenient.

Keep up on your nursing clinical skills especially if you have long summer breaks. In most cases, the further you get through the program, the less time you have allocated to practice these things.

Speak up if you’re lost or you have questions!! Most of the time you aren’t the only one and this shows your teachers that you are learning and thinking about the material.

Get into a healthcare facility to work as soon as you can. The experience you learn as a nursing assistant, patient care technician, nursing station technician, etc. is invaluable and you see/learn so much that translates to your nursing school and future career. Plus it helps with getting a job when you graduate!

Check your school email and your class homepage frequently! There is always a lot of key information and assignments that you need to know about that you might miss if you aren’t on top of things.

Your planner is your best friend. There are so many assignments, clinical dates, etc that you need to keep up with and having a one stop shop for all you need to know. I recommend putting all the important information in at the beginning of the semester and updating it frequently.

Here are some helpful online resources I used:

HelloTiffyRn.com is a website that offers free notes for pre-requisite classes, pharmacology information, NCLEX study materials and loads of other resources that are sure to help you along your journey

Nurse Achieve. They have a free 30 day trial of their NCLEX prep materials that is a lifesaver/ They have practice NCLEX tests so you can practice until you feel confident.

Pintrest. There are so many resources, examples study notes, cool mnemonics to remember key concepts, etc.

Nursing Pharm Podcasts. I used this to listen to in the car or when I was studying. They are short podcasts that break down key concepts and terms.

Registered Nurse RN. She has a website and YouTube videos that are in depth, but also really great at making sure you understand the physiology, key points, and other pertinent information for what you are needing to know. I used this resource a lot before exams to get a quicker synopsis of concepts.

NCLEX RN app. This is an easy way to have study materials and guides at the tip of your fingers. It’s available in the Apple Store or Google Play for free.

Hope these help get the ball rolling for you! It may be hard, but you’ll get through it and eventually you will have the coveted RN title behind your name. Go get em’ rock star!