By Pam Gardner, MSN, RN
Overwhelmed with resources for your students? Does your office look like a book rep regurgitated all over the desk, the floor and any flat surface available? Do you have stacks of 6-inch texts, CDs, flashcards, cliff notes, paperbacks, flyers on websites, and post-it notes with randomly found URLs? If you could see your students’ study areas, if they exist, they would look like this as well, except that they would also have binders full of notes that have been written and rewritten and then highlighted in all the colors of the rainbow.
I was in the shower one day—where all good ideas come from, of course–thinking about how nursing students study and felt that I had surely been struck by lightning when I had an idea. Dr. Susan Sanders, DNP, RN, NEA-BC and Vice President of Kaplan Nursing, identified in her most recent white paper that students need organization and guidance. My “lightning moment” came when I thought of the parallel between this concept and a roller coaster–strange I know, but bear with me.
A roller coaster has two rails, sometimes on different planes, but both are heading in the same direction. Nursing school is a lot like this wild ride, not just because of the screams, nausea, and occasional drop-offs or sharp turns, but also because successful completion of school and passing the NCLEX are our two rails. The question remains though, how do you help students understand that studying for one track does not always help them study for the other track, even though the tracks are parallel?
Organizing the aforementioned resources to match the dichotomy of the roller coaster, I mean, nursing educational process, may help us provide appropriate and pared down resources for students. Divide the resources into two separate stacks—one for studying content in nursing school and one for improving clinical judgment within NCLEX preparation. Then go through the stacks and identify the most current edition. You know what to do with the old ones. (Seriously, it’s ok to let them go!)
Then talk with your students to identify their needs. Are they weak in knowledge and content? Are they struggling to make connections and think clinically? Once you determine which stack they need, provide the best ONE for them. Remember too that the stack may change as students move through the nursing program.
Here are examples of my stacks. They contain some Kaplan products, because that is what I am used to, but other companies may have similar resources.
Stack #1 – Content:
Textbooks
ExamPrep for Nursing Students
Focused Review Tests
The Made Easy series
Content posters (ex: “This is the GI system!”)
Pharmacology Flash cards
Don’t worry that these may not be scholarly. For students grasping for content the knowledge from alternate sources is more important than walking around with the 6-inch book. I used to say that faculty is not really needed for content. They are needed to teach students what to do with the content! So to the second stack:
Stack #2 -Clinical Judgment:
Case studies
Simulations
NCLEX exams
Clinical thinking resources
Concept map examples
Care planning examples
NCLEX resources (analysis and application only)
These resources require more thought and explanation about how to use them. What is their purpose?
This is where faculty is really needed—to take into account how students think and to show students how to arrive at an answer based on those thinking patterns. This part works best if you let student push back with their thinking. That is how they learn.
Once we’ve helped students perform their study needs self-assessment, we are no longer randomly giving them resources that do not meet their needs. A student struggling with content who is given a case study will become frustrated and will be discouraged with this and other resources. By not using the appropriate resources or by not using the available resources wisely, this student will become overwhelmed and will not be able to progress and turn her weaknesses into strengths.
Consider having this conversation with the next student you see who looks like she just hopped off of a wild roller coaster ride. It should help calm the nausea and the nerves, and hopefully result in some higher test scores too. And of course, if you have any additional comments, thoughts, or recommendations, we hope you’ll share them below!
