 Hi, welcome to Nursing School Explained. Today's topic is a little bit different from the content I usually cover. Today's video will specifically address how to be successful in nursing school, and there are a lot of different facets to be considered when you go into nursing school, so I'll kind of give you an overview of things that I have found, help students that I've encountered and have helped them over the years. Hi and welcome to Nursing School Explained. Today's video is a little bit different from the usually content heavy videos that I present, and this will go specifically into how to be successful in nursing school. These are some strategies that professors many times discuss with students either at the beginning of their nursing career or at the beginning of each semester, but then sometimes these techniques or strategies kind of fall by the wayside, and then many times, for example, I find students coming back to me after they have been unsuccessful on an exam and I will go through all these different steps with them and come up with personalized strategies to help them out. So let's look at those and see how you can be successful going through nursing school. Number one, plan your day, week, month and semester. There's something to be said about being well prepared. There are only 24 hours in a day and certain activities have to happen. You have to eat, you have to sleep, you most likely have to go somewhere, and the more you can plan out your day, the better prepared you'll be. If you know you have an exam next week on Friday, it's probably not enough to start studying for it on Thursday evening. So plan your day out, and that also means planning out time for lunch, planning out time for getting away, planning out time for maybe spending with family and friends and so forth. We'll discuss that a little bit later. So getting a planner whether it's electronic or on paper will certainly benefit you. Prepare for class. Now nursing school is not one of those courses where you go there, you hear the lecture, you read the book, you go take an exam or a quiz and you're done. Nursing school is where your instructors will go and discuss certain concepts and topics with you. That means that you have to already come prepared for that, which brings us to step number three, read, read, read, read and read again. And that basically means because during class, your instructor will discuss maybe a case study, a real-world life scenario, you'll be discussing some ethical considerations, some legal stuff. So whatever it is, you have to already prepare for that. If you don't know what's going to be discussed, you won't be able to participate and you won't be able to get some exposure to that critical thinking that we know is so important in nursing. And then this reading here, a lot of times when I go over these steps with students and they tell me, oh, I didn't have the chance to read all the chapters or are out of time or only skimmed certain chapters, then one of the strategies that I usually recommend is read the assignment before the course. Then when the students comes back and they did well on the next exam and I asked them, what did you do differently? Well, I read the text, I read the information before I went to class. Because there is, this is the way that our brain works, right? We hear information there, we read it there, we hear it again, and that's how we make these connections. Now if you go to class and you haven't even heard about these topics or you vaguely remember from physiology, for example, then you're not going to be able to make those connections and participating class. And those connections are so important to make. Number four, scholarships. There is a lot of free money out there. And who doesn't like free money? Please look online, talk to your financial aid office, look at your textbook publishers, look at healthcare facilities in your area. Maybe you already work at a healthcare facility. There are so many organizations that give out free money. Sometimes nobody applies for these scholarships, so nobody gets the money when you could have got $500, $1,000, $1,500, whatever it might be. Please be on the lookout for scholarships. That especially applies to male students, male nursing students. Nursing is still predominantly female, but if you are male or if you identify as being male, there are a lot of scholarships for you out there as well as if you have a degree in a certain area already. Maybe you are of a certain ethnicity, maybe you have a certain job, maybe of course GPA always helps. So just do a Google search, look for those things, talk to your financial aid office about how to get free money, which will also allow you to work as little as possible. I know that some students are unable to not work because you have to support your family, you have to contribute, you might have something else going on, but the less you can work, the more time you'll have to spend for your studies and the more successful you'll be in school. The more money you have from scholarships, the less you will have to work to support yourself while you go through school. So please try and accomplish that as well. And then get buy-in from friends, family, and significant others. And that doesn't just mean buy-in. You got into nursing school in two years where everybody in the family will benefit because you'll be making good money, right? Buying means having that talk, how everybody can support you while you're going through school. Nursing school is not easy. Make sure that you discuss child care, cooking, grocery shopping, who drives somewhere, who's using what car, do I need to take the bus, those kind of things. Tell your family that nursing school you're going to be very dedicated to your studies, which means you won't have much time to spend with them. Of course, when you do have the time, make it worth it and really enjoy that time with it. But talk to them ahead of time, get that buy-in to say, hey, I'm going to be real busy. Maybe you need to do the dishes every week night and I can do them on weekends, whatever that might be. Have those discussions. Number seven, find out what type of learner you are and find the resources that fit your style. So there are three types of learners, auditory, visual, and then the kinetic ones, the ones that need the hand on. So if you're an auditory learner, maybe you need to ask your professor, can I record the lecture? If you're a visual learner, make sure that you find maybe YouTube video resources, including nursing school explained, that help you to understand the material. If you are a hands-on learner and you are currently practicing your physical assessments, well do that, perform these physical assessments, practice with your hands on. And some of us or many of us have learning styles that are a combination of these three. So see what works best for you. And there are some online tools, quick questionnaires that you can take to find out what type of learner you are, so that you can use the resources that are there for you to their best ability to really help you. Number eight, ask for help. If you are struggling, if you don't have enough time, maybe you're working too much, talk to your boss at work, talk to your significant other, ask your professor if you're not understanding a concept, ask your clinical instructor, ask your classmates, ask anybody, but please ask these questions because it's easy to fall behind. And then if you don't have the foundation for the material, then it's very hard to build on it because you have a gap there, right? Everybody is there to help you. We don't expect you to show up your first semester of nursing school and know everything, right? This is why you're there. It's a process. Nursing school goes from simple to complex. So if you're missing these simple terms, these simple tasks, these simple concepts, you're not going to be able to build on those. So please ask for help. Study groups. Find two or three, maybe four other students that are preferably good students that you get along with to form study groups. Discuss certain things. Of course, you'll have to do the reading assignment on your own, but then you can discuss, okay, I know this about congestive heart failure. I know these are the signs and symptoms. Oh, what helps you to remember this? The more you interact, the more you talk about this, the more connections your brain will make, and the more second nature it will become, which leads to point number 10, practice questions. There will always be exams in nursing school. And you know, at the end, there's a big exam called the NCLEX, which consists of a lot of exam questions. And nursing school will prepare you for that. But you can't expect to have a good score on the NCLEX or on any exam if you don't practice these types of questions. Now, questions in nursing school are different, and there's a different video where I discuss these kind of questions that you'll be encountering in nursing school. But the more you can go over these practice questions, the better you'll get at it. The more you can discuss the practice questions with people in your study group, the more connections you'll make. Because on the exam, you'll encounter a certain topic, and you'll say, Oh, I remember we discussed this in my study group. And my friend said this about this topic. And now I remember and I can apply it on my exam now. So study groups as well as practice questions. Very, very important. Number 11, make use of the skills lab. You never know when you have the opportunity to perform a skill in clinical. And some of these skills might be IV insertion, catheter insertion, wound care, whatever that might be. Well, if you've last done it two semesters ago in your first semester of nursing school, now it's a year later, you're not going to remember how to do that. You're going to be nervous. You're going to be afraid that you look bad in front of the nurse or in front of your instructor. But if you dedicate maybe a half hour every couple of weeks, go back to the skills lab, have a refresher of the skills that you might encounter. And again, the more you do them, the better you get at it. Number 12, pathophysiology. I'm a huge fan of pathophysiology, as you might have gathered from my other videos already. But in my opinion, if you understand how the body is supposed to work, and then there's a disease process. So now the body doesn't function in its normal way. But you know that certain organ does these functions, but now that organ isn't working, now then you can a lot of times come up with signs and symptoms, diagnostic tests, nursing care, patient teaching any of those activities that you'll definitely encounter on your exams. So pathophysiology, understand it and be able to apply it to your patient. Number 13, this might need to be number one, self-care. If you do not take care of yourself first, you will not be able to take care of others. And that includes your patients. That's first and foremost your patients, but it might also be some family members. And there are usually four aspects to this. So first of all, nutrition. Make sure that you eat well. You need to fuel your brain so that you can use it and it can help you retain the information and apply it in school and in clinical. I usually recommend having small frequent meals or snacks available. If you know you're going to be at the hospital for 12 hours, don't just bring one big meal. Make sure you bring a water bottle so you can stay hydrated and bring one or two meals and several snacks that are preferably easily accessible that you can snack on while you're taking care of your patients. And good meals typically consist of a good combination of healthy carbohydrates, proteins and fats. My favorite example before the exam, breakfast burrito, whole wheat tortilla, healthy carbohydrates and fiber. Maybe you put an egg in there for your protein and then you add some avocado and you have your healthy fat. It'll fuel you. It'll last you because of the protein and the fat content and you'll be golden through the exam. Exercise and fresh air. A lot of times I hear from students, I don't have the time to exercise. Well, if you plan your day out right, you can make time to exercise and it doesn't take much. It all it takes is getting out, walking around the block, running up and down the stairs, doing some stretches, finding a quick workout video, whatever it is. You don't have to spend two hours, find a video so that you don't have to drive anywhere. Go outside in your courtyard and your yard. Do some sort of physical activity every single day, particularly if you're sitting there and studying for a prolonged period of time because you will get tired. Then you move around, you feel refreshed after you've just been outside and now you can get back to your studies. Sleep is super important. Everybody has different needs for sleep and typically that's anywhere between six to nine hours. Now if you are up studying or finishing your care plan until 2.30 in the morning, but you have to be a clinical at six in the morning, you probably won't be getting much out of clinical. You'll be tired, you'll be irritable, you won't be retaining information and you won't serve your patient the right way. You won't learn much. So make sure that you get enough sleep. Now for students with children and other obligations, it might be a little bit more difficult. So talk to your partner, your significant other, your family, whoever is helping you so that you can get the sleep that you need because also when we sleep, our brain makes these connections. The synapses connect. So now you've learned the information in physiology. You've heard about it in your book. You've applied it with your study group. You had a case study in lecture why you sleep. It's all coming together. So you're making those connections while you're just dreaming about whatever it is that you're dreaming about. And then spend time with people you care about. This is super important. We are social beings. So if you have children, set some time aside a day, maybe an hour, half an hour, whatever it is that you can dedicate, but spend some time with them. If you just isolate yourself in your room, lock yourself up. You're not going to be very happy. Your family is not going to be very happy with you. Make some time to socialize. Super, super important. But again, plan it out well so that you say, okay, I've now been at this birthday party for a couple of hours. It's time for me to go home and get back to my studies. But these four under self care here are very important and might be the most important things. And this will serve you well, not only during nursing school, but also while you're working as a nurse, because nursing is a stressful job sometimes. But if you perform the self care, you will always serve your patients right. Thanks for watching this video on how to be successful in nursing school. Hopefully you'll be able to pick out some of these principles and apply it to your life. Maybe one resonates with you more than the other. And I wish you good luck and success doing nursing school. Thanks for watching. We'll see you soon.