Mastering the NCLEX: Tools, Tactics, and Personal Insights from your Nursing Student Coach

It is my personal mission to help put more great nurses into the world and I would love to do it with your help . So if you like the podcast , I invite you to please give us a review , subscribe and share it with a fellow aspiring nurse who you know and love .

Today I want to talk about the NCLEX and I'm probably well , definitely I'm going to talk about the NCLEX a lot because it's a running theme in nursing school . You're hearing about it all the time . Maybe you have some anxieties about it .

Your professors , I'm sure , talk about it all the time and the really good professors are doing practice questions with you in your classes to prepare for the NCLEX . I passed my NCLEX and after , when I passed , first of all , it's the best feeling ever . It's the best feeling in the world .

But I had an epiphany when I saw that word passed , and the epiphany that I had was wow , I really was prepared for this exam , because there is so much unnecessary anxiety and stress that comes along with it and you can't avoid it . I mean , it really is the most important exam of your life because everything just kind of comes down to this one test .

But the pressure that you put on yourself , it was a lot and I didn't even really expect that kind of pressure . I mean , nursing school was very daunting and full of pressure , but then nursing school ends and you're not done . You've got this big , big test where everything just kind of comes down to this one day .

But here's what I realized because I had so much self-doubt I really did and I did really well in nursing school and there was this pressure that I felt and this self-doubt of , okay , well , the other shoe is going to drop sometime .

You know , like I did really well in nursing school , but this exam is oof , like it's going to be hard , and what if I don't do ? Well , what if I fail and I have to take it again ? And there was just so much self-doubt until I saw the word passed and I said , oh okay , I do know what I'm talking about .

I do know what I'm doing , and I wish I had had a bit more of that when I walked in , when I was studying all of those things . Here's the biggest takeaway from that is I think the best way to do well on the NCLEX , the best way to pass your NCLEX , is to do well in nursing school . That's it .

If you practice the seven habits , if you are consistent , if you're consistent in nursing school and you are just pouring yourself into it , if you have passion for this and you really want to be a nurse and you are putting everything that you have living and breathing the material every day and you are just putting your all into it , and you're doing well in

nursing school not just passing , but doing well you are going to be great . This exam is not meant to weed out people like you who are working hard and who know their stuff , and you're not going to know everything . You are definitely not going to know everything .

There were questions that I just did not know and I was prepared for that , because this exam they try to find out what you don't know and if you're getting hard questions , it means you're doing well , which is such a mind mess up . Don't want to swear on the show .

It's such a mind trip because you're getting these hard questions and you're thinking , am I stupid or am I doing well ? Because I've heard that getting hard questions is a good thing .

But anyway , in nursing school I heard often I heard people say all the time , I'll worry about the NCLEX when I have to , I'll worry about the NCLEX when I graduate and I'll just study for it . Then I'm not even thinking about the NCLEX now . It's just this thing that's way off in the future . And it's true , it's far off in the future .

But studying for the NCLEX does not start the day you graduate . Studying for the NCLEX starts the day you start nursing school , because you're going to have questions from all over the place in nursing school and you can't just think , oh , I'll just worry about it then . No , you have to think , well , I'm studying for it now .

And that's not to make you nervous , that's just a fact . You're preparing for the NCLEX all the time . Right now , every time you take an exam , you are preparing for the NCLEX . It's just how it is . And so I talked in the first episode about consistency and doing your daily 10 , doing your daily 10 practice questions .

I promise you , if you do your daily 10 practice questions every day in nursing school and you're putting in the time , you're going to be fine , and that's not to say that you don't have to study . I'll tell you what I did , briefly , to prepare for the NCLEX .

I took four weeks to study and during those four weeks I did anywhere from like minimum of four hours a day . Sometimes I did a full eight hour day , with breaks of course . You got to have your popcorn breaks , you got to have your coffee breaks , your yoga breaks , whatever . Whatever you do to , you know , rejuvenate yourself .

And I would say I split up the time half the time between actually studying , like reviewing all my notes from nursing school , reviewing all my body systems , reviewing all the drugs and farm , just studying and the other half I did doing practice questions and I did those simulated exams to see how I was doing .

The thing is , it really doesn't matter for your practice questions . I don't think it matters what resource you use . There are a lot of them out there . I know some people use you worlds and they like it . I didn't use you worlds . I'm not saying it's good or bad , I just didn't use it . But some people love that . I used simple nursing .

They have an NCLEX program and I did all of their practice questions . They have about 3,000 of them and I did Saunders . They have an online . I bought the book and then they have , you know , an online thing that goes with it . I also did the Mark Clemuc review course , which I highly recommend . Mark Clemuc is absolutely amazing .

I did his live in-person course and listened to every YouTube video that he had , and they have a free podcast called Clemuc reviews where they have NCLEX prep videos that are really , really , really great . So I did that . And then the day of my NCLEX I mean it's quite an experience . I'll say that I got there early , went in .

I thought I was going to take a break every 10 questions that was my plan , but I started to really worry about time . I did take a break , I got through the first 10 questions and I took a break . Then I came back and , before I knew it , two and a half hours had gone by and I was on question 40 .

So I said , okay , if I get more than 85 questions and 85 is the minimum I may run out of time and you have five hours to take the NCLEX and I never take a long time to take exams . I'm never the first one done , but I'm usually somewhere in the middle and all in all it took me four hours to take the NCLEX , but around two and a half hours .

I was halfway through and I was only on question 40 . So I did start going a little bit faster , not rushing . I still read every single question twice and made 100% sure I wanted to answer the way that I did . And then eventually my exam did shut off at 85 questions , which is the minimum number of questions , and statistically that's a good sign .

If your exam cuts off , it's anywhere from 85 questions to I believe it's 145 questions , might be 135 . I think it's 145 . Now that it's the next gen , it's a different version of the NCLEX . Now it shut off at 85 . And I said , okay , this is either really good or really bad . But then you have to wait .

You have to wait 48 hours and it's a computerized test and they know if you passed or not . Why can't you just know ? So that waiting was the worst . It was the worst and you talk yourself in and out of how you did about 10,000 times .

I had convinced myself that I failed because you will feel , not everybody felt like this , but the vast majority Walk out of the NCLEX feeling like they failed because it is such a weird exam . It was strange . I mean , of course , there were questions that I knew .

There were definitely questions that I knew , and when it comes to next gen , I Feel like next gen is a gift . I really think next gen makes things Easier because all of the case studies that you get are very straightforward . They are case studies and you just have to answer questions about things happening to your patient .

Next steps how do you think critically and it may sound intimidating , but it's really not . If you understand what's happening to that patient , you can answer the questions . Plus you get partial credit . If you get , you know , half of the the answers correct , great , and it's also plus one , minus one .

Meaning if you Check , if you select a box and it's right , then you get plus one , but if you select a box and it's wrong , it's minus one . So you want to only put an answer if you are 100% sure that it's right , because if it's wrong you could lose a point . So , yeah , I found out that I passed and and , like I said , it was the best feeling .

The waiting is terrible and the mind games are Terrible . People that you love and who know you and support you are gonna say things to you like of course , you passed , you did great , and You're not gonna believe them because You're just , you're gonna be visited by the self-doubt monster or at least I was .

If you are not , if you walk out feeling confident , huh , bless you . That's amazing . How do I be like you ?

Because I'm just telling you , I was so anxious for those 48 hours until you see those , the one word passed and I , I fell to the floor , not literally , I , I kind of went huh and I just cried and everything kind of just Came together and I said , oh , wow , okay , lauren , you , actually you , you were prepared for this , you you knew what

you were doing . And so if I can share any words of wisdom from that crazy tale of my ankle x story , it's really , if you've put in the work , believe in yourself because you have got this , you can totally do this .

And if you're at the beginning of your nursing school journey or somewhere in the middle , just keep doing what you're doing , just keep going and you are going to be just fine . The ankle x it's a nerve-wracking but we all have to do it . We all went through it .

Every single nurse out there has been through it , and here's the good news you only have to do it once . Can you imagine if you had to take that thing every year ? Whoo , but uh , it's over for me and I survived . You can , too , and You're going . You're gonna be great , it's going to be fine . Just prepare , put in the work and be consistent . That's it .

So I thank you so much for watching , and it is my mission to help put more great nurses into the world , so thank you for helping me to do that . Please share this with somebody that you know and you love . I'm grateful for you and I will see you the next time . Have a great day .