Previous healthcare experience…does it HELP or HURT you in nursing school? How should you study Pathophysiology when it’s all so o
How should you prepare for an accelerated nursing program? Any tips for improving general math skills? What are the BEST sources for A&P review? How should you use the study guides your instructor provides to get the best grades?Did you know that I have a free Facebook Group you can join to connect with other nursing students AND get some help from me? It’s called “Nursing Students in Nursing School”, and today I’m answering one of the student questions I received there.
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Links from Episode 67:
Free training on how to study to start thinking like a nurse: https://www.yournursingtutor.com/value-sbss/
Leave a 5-start rating and review for the Navigating Nursing School with Your Nursing Tutor Podcast on Apple Podcast: www.YourNursingTutor.com/podcast
VIP Tutoring Membership: www.YourNursingTutor.com/vip
Free Facebook Group: Nursing Students in Nursing School, (Free Help and Support)
Transcript for Episode 67
Welcome to the Navigating Nursing School with Your Nursing Tutor podcast! Did you know that I have a free Facebook Group you can join to connect with other nursing students AND get some help from me? It’s called “Nursing Students in Nursing School”, and you can find the link in the show notes for today’s episode, located at www.YourNursingTutor.com/episode67.
Today I’m sharing one of our recent Q&A sessions that we do every friday in that Facebook group. I’ll be answering questions about how to prepare for an accelerated nursing program, tips for improving general math skills so you can do better on entrance exams, I’ll be sharing my favorite resources for A&P review, and we’ll even discuss the best way to use those often confusing study guides your instructor sometimes gives you before exams.The Facebook group where I answer these questions is a separate thing from my VIP Tutoring Membership, which you also might have heard me talk about. The VIP Tutoring Membership is my paid tutoring community where you can chat with me directly during live group tutoring sessions via zoom so that we can have real discussions that will improve your critical thinking and get you thinking like a nurse even faster. You also receive a guided pathway of curated resources to conquer the most common nursing school challenges like test anxiety and dosage calculations, plus access to a 24/7 members-only forum where you can continue to ask me questions throughout the week.
But like I said,the Facebook Group is a separate thing from the paid VIP Tutoring Membership, so if you’re not quite ready to join yet then I highly encourage you to come on over to Facebook and be a part of that community so that you can still get your nursing school questions answered once a week by me. The link for that plus any of the other resources I mention today can be found at the show notes page at www.YourNursingTutor.com/episode67
Enjoy today’s episode!
Hey there, it’s Nicole Whitworth from your nursing tutor and the nursing students in nursing school group, which if you are watching this, you are part of the free nursing students and nurses school Facebook group, get help with your nursing tutor. So that’s what we’re doing every single Friday, I do a Facebook Live. And I answer your questions that you have about nursing school. Basically, anything to do with nursing school, pre nursing in school, mentorship, getting your first job tackling clinical care plans, content, whatever it is. That’s what I specialize in helping students with for the past, like 13 or 14 years. So that’s what I do for you here. I got three questions this week that I’m going to answer for you.
The first one is from Tara. Now, Tara is actually in my VIP tutoring membership, which if you don’t know, so this group that you’re watching this in is totally free for students. But if you want to be able to ask me more questions, if you want to be able to kind of go back and forth with me and discuss things, because that’s really the best way to learn. I specialize in helping students learn how to think like a nurse. And you can’t do that just from memorizing a list of facts. So you really, it helps to process things at a deeper level. And that can really, you can get a lot more confidence in doing that by working with a professional. So if that’s something that sounds good to you, then you can do like Tara did and join the VIP tutoring membership. Just let me know and I can send you the link. To learn more about that. We’re actually about to start raising, we’re about to raise our prices in a couple of weeks because we have been adding so much new stuff to help you out in the VIP tutoring membership. So let me know if you’re interested and I will send you the link. But Tara said she is in an accelerated BSN program in California. She starts April 25. And it’s a 12 month program clearly accelerated. She’s excited but super nervous and is it’s going to be tough. And she’s wanting to get a head start and trying to refresh her knowledge on CT prereqs. It’s very overwhelming. She doesn’t know where to start, what do I recommend. So that’s really great, Tara, I love getting questions like this from pre nursing students because it tells me that you are thinking ahead. And that’s really what you need to do in nursing school because it is going to be different in nursing school. So even if you were a really good student before nursing school, nursing school tests to you in a very different way than any other class you’ve ever studied. I had my master’s degree in clinical psychology when I started my accelerated BSN program back in the day. And I still failed my very first quiz. Now I was able to turn it around because I figured out the best ways to study. So I was hired as the school tutor by the end of the first semester, because I was able to help my classmates and improve much more quickly. And so I was able to help other students too. But this is what I recommend. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, you haven’t started yet to getting ready, I usually recommend to three things. First, I recommend if you have any anxiety surrounding it, and I’m not talking about like clinical anxiety, that would be like definitely talk to a mental health professional, but I’m talking like just your test anxiety, you’re going back to school nerves, things like that, like everyday sort of anxiety and just looking for a way to kind of keep those under control so that they don’t get out of control and start affecting the way that you’re performing. Then I recommend working on some test anxiety strategies, I have some really good ones. Tara, since you’re a VIP member, I’d say just honestly, there’s a pre Nursing Pathway in the VIP tutoring membership, just go through that. Because those are the three things test anxiety, I recommend that you get comfortable with dosage calculations, if you’re not already. You don’t have to be good at math in order like good at math in the traditional way to be good at dosage calculations. There really is just a simple six step, step by step process you can go through, there’s two rules that I teach that if you always, always always follow those two rules, then you’ll never get a dosage calculations question wrong. So it’s good to get familiar with that so that when you jump in, because you’re more than likely going to have a required dosage calculations tests. So that’ll be another thing not to worry about. And then the third thing I always recommend doing for pre nursing students is to start thinking about how you’re going to study in nursing school because like I said, it’s a guarantee it’s going to be different than how you’ve studied for any other class in the past. And as part of that you can start practicing that study method by digging into some of your, your prereq things like reviewing some of your prereq things specifically anatomy and physiology, okay? Because I will tell you over and over again that ANP is the most important thing that you can know, in nursing school in order to do well going forward. And a lot of times students think that they know their a&p they think they remember it good enough. Good enough.
But then when I say, Okay, we’ll tell me XYZ, it’s kind of you realize it’s kind of fuzzy. So it’s one thing to think you remember it to feel like you kind of recognize it, but you have to be able to I always say, if you remember the Magic School Bus, oh, kids TV show with Miss Frizzle, you have to be as competent as Miss Frizzle. And be able to give a guided tour of an a&p system while driving a school bus full of fifth graders, okay, so that means you have to be able to talk in everyday language that they understand too, because that’s how you’re going to understand. So those are the three things and it’s not too early for you to be attending the live tutoring sessions that you get as a VIP tutoring member, you’re gonna learn so much from hearing the other conversations and discussions that we go through. And you’re more than welcome to ask your questions to either as you’re preparing or, you know, if you’re digging into the ANP, and you’re like, Nicole, I don’t get this part of the ANP. How does this even apply? Or if you want to be thinking about? How am I going to apply this ANP to my fundamentals nursing class, because usually, that’s the first class that you, you know, you have in your nursing programs. So accelerated programs can be fast. So you definitely are going to be hitting the ground running. So yeah, definitely come to the live next live tutoring session, which just happens to be on Monday. And we’ll help you get you set up so that you feel comfortable and confident going into that. Great question.
Second question is from Jacqui Usha, she says, any tips that I struggle with general math, but I won’t give up. So first of all, awesome for you for not giving up. Because when I work with students, that’s the attitude I look for, if I want to see if a student is going if if I want to predict if a student is going to be successful as a nurse, I look for that won’t give up attitude, because there will be bumps in your nursing school journey, and they’re going to be unexpected, sometimes they’re gonna cause your journey to take longer than you expected to take. And that can be discouraging, which is why it’s so important to surround yourself with positive people. But if you don’t give up, you can get there, you can definitely get there. So since you’re asking about general math, I’m going to guess that you are still pre nursing, which is fine. And that maybe you’re preparing for a entrance exam. So if that’s the case, the trick with math is two things. One, you have to get your math anxiety under control, I teach a dosage calculations boot camp every week. And if anybody’s interested in that, you can let me know I’ll send you the link. But the the thing that I work with the most students, before I can even teach them how to do dosage calculations is I have to teach them how to tackle their math anxiety. Because if you can get through your math anxiety, you’re going to be able to do better at math. And here’s part of the thing is that when you have math anxiety, research shows that you’re more likely to avoid math, which makes sense, right? We avoid things that we don’t like. And and so that’s true with math. However, it creates a self fulfilling prophecy where if you avoid the math because of your math, anxiety, and then you get tested on the math, you’re going to do bad because you didn’t practice like you could have or should have. And then that bad grade is going to prove to yourself that you’re not good at math, when that’s not the case at all. It’s actually just that you didn’t practice enough. And so that’s, that’s really the first thing is to put a plan in place with some accountability that’s going to force you to practice despite your anxiety, despite your desire to procrastinate. Because you’re never going to get better at math, if you don’t practice. The second thing is to get a good review book. And if you are preparing for an entrance exam, then there’s a few good ones that you can get on Amazon, feel free to message me if you would like the links to those and I’ll be happy to give them to you. But yeah, just get a good review book and start there. For most people. That will be enough. Of course, you can always, you know, get further help and tutoring but usually, for most adults that are going back to nursing school, those two things that will help you the most for when it comes to general math for entrance exams. So good question to Felicia.
Okay, last question for today is from Jackie. Jackie is also one of my VIP tutoring members. So that’s awesome. Just so everybody knows, my VIP tutoring members, they can ask me questions like anytime during the week, we have a private members only forum. But sometimes if they’re just in Facebook, and they’re thinking about it, and it’s a non urgent question, then they might post it in here, I guess and, you know, answered on Fridays, but Jackie, actually she posted this question here but she also posted in the member forum. So actually Actually, she and I have been having some really good back and forth conversations about this already. And I’ve been reviewing some of her notes and creating some videos for her to give her feedback so that she can really be making fast progress as she’s studying for her fundamentals class. But I thought I would leave this question for this for today anyway, because I always say I have one question with one students asking the question, lots of people are asking it, they just haven’t asked me yet. So So she said, she is just started nursing school, and she’s trying to get a handle while she joined to the VIP group, my VIP tutoring membership in hopes of getting a handle on what to study, and how to study now before she gets stuck in the weeds of nursing school, but she already feels a little bit lost. It took her about three quizzes and two tests to finally click on how to answer the questions, which is a really typical experience. If it ever clicks for people, a lot of people it doesn’t even take longer than that to click. So she says she asks my biggest question and maybe some of the other questions is How can I take my class syllabus each week and create a silver bullet study system? Because it is a broad topic for fundamentals. Also, is there a good source for a&p? So the Quick question for ANP she was talking specifically about reviewing her a&p Because it was just like what I was suggesting to Tara earlier, she Jackie found that she was a little fuzzy on her ANP.
And so she’s going back to review, I have three really good online sources for ANP that I always recommend that are all free. First is interactive biology with Leslie Samuel, I just did a podcast interview with him two days ago on Wednesday. So you can check out my podcast, navigating nursing school with your nursing tutor and listen to that. But he’s got a really, really great YouTube channel and website, which he just breaks down ANP in a way that’s really easy to understand. So that’s interactive biology. The second one I recommend is science with Suzanna, if you just search her search for that, then you’ll find she’s got a YouTube channel, but she also has a web page that even has principles that you can use to help study and quiz yourself on ANP. And then the third one, I like his Crash Course anatomy and physiology, which is on YouTube. And that’s another really good kind of fast paced overview of ANP. So those three are my favorite ANP resources. Now the answer the other part of the question, you if you haven’t heard of the silver bullet study system, that is the method that I developed to teach students how to think like a nurse. So instead of just telling you, oh, you need to think like a nurse. You’re like, well, how if it was that easy, we’d all just do it, right? I developed, I thought about how do you experience nurses think and then I broke it down into a four step system that you can use to apply when you’re studying. So that you really can practice wrestling with those concepts and making the like the dots of connections that you need to make in order to begin thinking like a nursery yourself. So with this, she was saying that her teacher gives a class syllabus each week. And what I find and I’ve done this for a lot of students in my VIP tutoring membership is when they send me their like study guide Review Guide from their teacher. Often it just feels all over the place and overwhelming. And like, like where’s the organization here. And that is the key really, it’s, it’s to look at that. And you have to organize it in a way that makes sense because your nursing instructors are experienced nurses. So research tells us that when somebody is experienced at something, they’re really bad at thinking back to what it was like to be a beginner. And as such, it’s really hard for them to predict what’s going to be difficult or easy for you as a new nursing student.
And so because of that, you want to look at these review guides that you’re given and you want to categorize them and think about how do they fall in the four steps of the silver bullet study system. Now, I also have a free training for this overworld study system. It’s a 20 minute workshop. So if you’re not a VIP tutoring member, and you want to learn more about that, send me a message, leave a comment on this. And I will be happy to send you the free link to to learn a little more about that. But that’s really what it is. It’s about organizing the study guide into the steps of thinking like a nurse because that’s what your instructors already doing by default. She’s just not doing a very good job of communicating that to you. And so you kind of need to wrestle with that and do that for yourself. And then that will really clarify what it is you need to study why you need to study it and how it all connects together. So I hope that was helpful today. Remember, every single week look for the post the q&a post in the pinned area and post your questions there and we’ll be more than happy to answer them for you. Until next week. Have a great day and good luck on your nursing journey. ——–
I hope you found today’s Q&A helpful to you. Remember, even if you’re not ready to join the VIP Tutoring Membership for yourself, you’re always welcome to join our free Facebook group community called “nursing Students in Nursing School: Help and Support from Your Nursing Tutor”.You can find the direct link to that FB Group, plus a link to the free “how to study” workshop that I mentioned, on the show notes page at www.YourNursingTutor.com/episode67.
Before we end today, would you mind doing me a 30-second favor? Would you go to Apple Podcasts and write a 2-sentence Review for Navigating Nursing School with Your Nursing Tutor? For the first sentence, simply tell me where you’re at on your nursing journey. Then in your second sentence, let me know why you like listening to this podcast. It’s one small way that you can support the mission of Your Nursing Tutor by helping other nursing students discover that it IS possible for “normal people” to get through nursing school without completely sacrificing your family, your job, or even your sanity.
Until next episode, good luck on your nursing journey!
Nicole Whitworth is the founder of Your Nursing Tutor. She has a BSN and an MA in Clinical Psychology, and has been a professional nursing tutor for over 12+ years. Nicole specializes in getting nursing students through school confidently and calmly so that everything finally “clicks”. She is also the creator of the Silver Bullet Study System, an easy-to-follow study method that automatically trains your brain to become a nurse at the same time that you study for your normal nursing classes.