 Hi guys, so I have some exciting news. I passed my CCRN exam and I'm officially CCRN certified. So if you don't know what CCRN is, it's your critical care registered nurse certification. It's through AACN. You have to have a certain amount of hours in the ICU getting critical care experience. And it's basically just a certification to show that you are well-knowledged, well-versed in the critical care specialty. My job doesn't give you really any incentive to take it as far as a pay increase. They do reimburse you for the exam. But it just looks really good, especially if you're planning on furthering your education to do maybe your CRNA or your NP. And it just looks good in general and it just shows that you are, you know, proficient in critical care nursing. Now, there's a lot of nurses that don't have that certification and they're still awesome, amazing critical care nurses. And there's nurses that fail that exam that are so wonderful. And there's nurses that pass that exam that maybe aren't the best critical care nurse. So at the end of the day, it is just another exam. But I'm very excited to have passed it. To be honest, before I jump into like what I actually did to study, I felt like walking to the exam. I was more nervous just because normally when I study for exams, I go balls to the wall. I study hardcore. So that way when I walk into the exam, I just leave it all behind me. I'm like, you know what? I've done the best that I can. I've studied super hard. Like no matter what the outcome is on the exam, I know I put 100% effort into it. In this exam, I did not feel that way. And part of it is just because I'm pregnant. I have not been feeling well. My motivation level has just been so when I signed up for the exam a couple weeks ago, I said, I'm just going to stick with this date. Just going to take it. A lot of people at my work had passed the exam recently. So I kind of was like, you know, you know, we test similar or whatnot. So hopefully I'll be okay. So I did do quite a few different things. So let me start with the tips of things that I did. So the first thing that I used was Nicole Cupchick's ace the CCRN books. She has a practice review question book and the study guide. And what I like about her study guide is it's very just short to the point. It's really easy to kind of just look at and scroll through. And then she's got three exams with 150 practice questions each, which is how many questions are on the CCRN. It's not like the NCLEX where it shuts off at a certain number if you've passed or failed. You get 150 questions and that's it. 25 of those questions don't count. They're just for data usage for future tests. But you don't realize that you don't realize which questions are those until like the end. It'll tell you your score, but you still don't know which questions were counted and which weren't. So I took all three of the practice exam questions. I thought her questions were very similar to the exam questions. And then I liked that it had the rationales straight to the point easy. And it also explained not just why your answer was like the correct answer was correct, but it also explained why the other answers were not correct. So I thought that was helpful versus just explaining why the correct answer was correct. So I did all of those exams, went through her study guide. To be honest, I didn't go through the entire study guide. I really focused a lot on cardiology because that's mostly what's on the exam. So I kind of spent a lot of time on that, a lot of time on pulmonology and then neuro because that was kind of like a good chunk. And then like 20% of the exam is like those questions about, you know, if a family member said this, like, how would you approach it? Like those therapeutic types of questions. I don't know what the technical name of those questions are called, but a lot of those are kind of obvious, at least to me. So I didn't really study that stuff that much. But the next thing that I did is back in November, I actually took a class through my work. So this is probably not offered exactly where like the same class where you are at, depending on where you're at. But I'm sure there's similar classes around. I know like Nicole Cupchick has a class and all that. But basically, I just went through the book that from that class just briefly, like the week before the exam, I kind of just skimmed through it to kind of refresh my mind. Because again, that class was back in November. I took my test in February. The last two things I did, and I'm going to leave Nicole Cupchick's information down below and all my other tips down below as well. So that way you have like the information readily available in the description box. But the last two things that I did was one, I listened to a couple of the Laura Gisperis tapes. They're kind of old school. My work had them. I just downloaded them, whatnot. So I know those are out there. I thought that I liked those tapes because she was easy for me to listen to. Like her references were very easy, so to speak. And like how she laid the information out there. But they're kind of, a lot of the information is old school and some of it's outdated. So like some of this stuff is not on the test anymore that she talks about. So that's kind of one downside. I didn't listen to all of them. I think I listened to like mostly the cardiology and the neuro one, because those were spent in the two big areas. And then the last thing I did was used and not an English prep tool. I used, I think I already deleted the app. I used the CCRN adult pocket prep app. So that's what the app looks like on the app store. And it just had like I think 400, oh my gosh, focus. It had like 400 or so questions and I just went through a bunch of questions, took practice exams, things like that. The questions were pretty similar to the exam. I felt like the exam questions were like, it was really weird. Like they use different wording than what you normally would hear in the nursing world. And maybe that's just where I'm at. But it's hard to explain. Like I wish I could give a good example, but it's like, for example, instead of calling like an ABG and ABG or an arterial blood gas, like it would call it blood gas. And I know that sounds kind of silly, but like, then it makes you wonder, is it a venous blood gas? Is it an arterial blood gas? Like, what are they talking about? And so, and that's just me kind of overthinking things. But I did feel like the exam was definitely kind of different than, I mean, quite the exam questions that I practiced were similar. But the exam itself was just kind of weird. And I don't know, but I passed. I got 101 out of 125 questions correct, which is like, I think an 81%. Do you have to have a 71% I think to pass? So I definitely passed. I'm super excited. Your certification is good for three years. And you have to just take enough like CEs or CEUs, whatever to renew your certification. Or you can take the exam in three years to renew it, which no, thanks. No one wants to do that. But I'm super excited. I passed. I hope this kind of gives you guys a little information on what I did to study. If you've passed your CCR and are going to take it, leave down some comments below. I just say such weird things now. Leave some comments down below on your advice or tips or things that you're doing. I'm always interested in hearing that out. And hearing that out, see, I just don't know if it's just being pregnant. I just say like such weird things like things just don't flow out of my mouth correctly. But thank you guys for watching and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.