Chapter 1

Preparing for Nursing Examinations

When and Why Are Nursing Exams Administered?

Nursing exams are administered at various points throughout each nursing course. Your nursing faculty administer these exams to you to test your knowledge of the content taught in a course and to test your ability to analyze, synthesize, and apply concepts learned to care for clients in various situations. The exams you take in your nursing courses are also designed to prepare you for the NCLEX® exam, the examination that you need to take and pass after you graduate in order to become a licensed nurse. Additional purposes for administering exams are listed in the box below.

Purposes for Administering Exams

1. To test knowledge of the content taught in a course

2. To test the ability to analyze and apply concepts learned to care for clients in various situations

3. To ensure the development of a professional nurse who can safely and competently care for clients served in the profession

4. To ensure the development of a critical thinker who can make sound judgments and decisions based on evidence-based practice

5. To make certain that the student is a successful NCLEX exam candidate who will pass the NCLEX exam on his or her first sitting

The Beginning Nursing Student: What Should You Think About?

What Is a Beginning Nursing Student?

If you have just completed your support courses (e.g., anatomy and physiology, microbiology, chemistry) and are entering your first nursing course, then you are a beginning nursing student. Your first nursing course is most likely titled “Fundamentals in Nursing” or something similar, and in this course you will learn all the safe and basic concepts necessary for caring for a client.

The NCLEX Exam: Why Do You Need to Think About It Now?

You may think that the NCLEX exam is far off, and it is; however, it is critical that you think about it the moment you enter your first nursing class. You may ask, “Why is this important?” To be successful on the NCLEX exam, you need to become as familiar as you can be with what this exam is all about as early as possible in the nursing program. You need to know that taking the NCLEX exam will be a reality once you graduate and that this exam must be passed in order to become a licensed nurse. Often, students are concerned with the “here and now” of what they want and need to accomplish and are not concerned about the future, the NCLEX exam. Students say, “I will worry about the NCLEX exam when the time comes.” At this point, it is much too late. So think about this exam early; visit the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) Web site at www.ncsbn.org, and download the detailed test plan for the NCLEX exam. This test plan provides a wealth of information about the exam and lists the content areas that will be tested on it. Use these lists as your study guides for preparing for exams for each nursing course. By doing this, consider that you are not only preparing for your nursing exams but also preparing for the NCLEX exam at the same time. You will be ready when the NCLEX exam becomes a reality for you!

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Student-to-Student

It may seem impossible to think about the NCLEX early on while you are in nursing school because of all of your course commitments. But remember that the NCLEX tests you on all the same concepts you are being tested on during your nursing courses. So, think NCLEX!

Planning: Why Is It So Important?

Much of your success in nursing school has to do with how you plan and organize your time. You will have a very busy schedule and will need to plan ahead to best prepare for your exams, clinical experiences, and other assignments. Get an organizer with a calendar or another type of calendar that you feel will suit your needs, and use this as your planning guide for everything that you will need to do. Make notes about both your short-term goals and your long-term goals. For your short-term goals, note your classes and times, school meetings and appointments, study session times, assignment due dates, date and exam times, and any other obligations related to school. For your long-term goals, note what you plan to accomplish each year until your projected graduation date. Look at your calendar daily to meet any day-to-day obligations, and look ahead at your long-term goals to be sure that you are ready for graduation.

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Lifestyle Planning

When building a plan to address your long-term and short-term goals, remember to allow time for activities that are not related to school, such as exercise, rest, relaxation, and fun. You need to have balance in life in order to be successful in a challenging academic program.

What Can You Expect on Nursing Exams?

How Do Nursing Exams Differ From Other Exams?

When you enter your first nursing course, you need to remember that your exam experience in college up to this point has related to testing in support courses, such as anatomy and physiology, microbiology, and chemistry. In these courses, test questions on exams have been primarily at the cognitive level of knowledge or understanding. These support courses have required not only a great deal of reading but also memorization in order to answer the exam questions correctly. So basically, your test-taking skills to this point may be quite good but are based on knowledge, some understanding, and memorization.

Nursing exams differ greatly from the exams that you have been used to taking. Memorization alone will not get you through a nursing exam. Some memorization, such as memorizing certain laboratory values or memorizing formulas for calculating a medication dosage or an intravenous flow rate is necessary in nursing. However, the exam questions on a nursing exam are at a higher cognitive level than memorization and will require you to analyze or synthesize information and apply it to a situation. You will not be able to rely only on recall skills to answer test questions on a nursing exam. Instead, you will need to understand pathophysiology related to certain nursing content and disease processes and use critical thinking skills to answer exam questions. Do not let that first nursing exam “blow you away” or “throw you for a loop,” as some may say. Be ready for it, and you will do great and pass!

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Student-to-Student

The best way to prepare for a nursing exam is to review the “need to know” content and then practice answering as many questions related to the content as possible. What better way to study for an exam that requires analysis, synthesis, and application than to answer practice questions designed at these higher levels of cognitive ability?