#485: Why Nursing School Feels Overwhelming

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Well, hello there. I'm Nurse Mo, and this is the Straight A Nursing Podcast where I teach concepts and share tips to help you thrive in school and at the bedside. This episode is for my nursing student friends out there, all my study buddies. So think about this. Have you ever walked out of an exam thinking, wow, I studied a lot and that could have gone a lot better? Or maybe you've had a weekend or a whole week where you felt like you studied non-stop and still.

Go into class the next day, feel like you're behind, even though you did all that work. Like no matter how much you do, it's never ever enough. Maybe you're really excited about starting nursing school. Maybe you haven't gotten into school yet or you haven't started your program yet. But all you hear are these horrible horror stories of Struggling to just barely pass and giving up all your spare time to study and prepare for clinical and do all the assignments.

And if that is filling you with dread, then I want you to know if you align with any of these things I mentioned, this episode is for you because what I'm talking about today is why this happens. There is a reason and it's not the reason you might think, which is, well, nursing school is just horrible thing that we have to get through. We'll actually talk about why this happens and I'll give you some tips on what to do.

Differently. So if you're into that, keep listening. So the truth is, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. Nursing school is challenging. Nothing that I teach you on this podcast or through any of my online courses is going to make the content less massive, but it will make you Able to rise up to that challenge. Okay, so I I just want to put that out there. Nursing school is challenging.

And it's not challenging just because it's a ton of work. It's challenging for a lot of reasons. It's challenging because there is constant mental pressure. There are always going to be multiple competing priorities where everything feels really, really important, really, really urgent, really, really at the top of your, you know, threat level midnight list of things to do.

It's challenging because so much of what you're learning is so completely new to you. There's just a total newness about everything. It can feel challenging because. You're in it and it feels like the material, that onslaught of learn this, learn this, learn this never ends because honestly it doesn't. There's always something new to learn. I learn new things every day and I've been a nurse for a pretty long time now.

It can feel challenging because you might be studying all the time and not seeing the results that you want. Or you're walking into exams, feeling really unsure, even when you've prepared. Maybe the exams are weird and nursing school exams are weird and collect style questions. make you think in a different way. So there's really a lot of reasons why nursing school is very challenging. And a lot of times what I see students do is they assume, oh man, this is hard. I need to study more

So they put in more hours, they utilize more resources, they make more flashcards, they read more of their textbooks, and guess what? A lot of times this does not fix the underlying problem and in some cases maybe even a lot of cases it makes it worse so if you've been in that cycle or are

terrified of being in that cycle, understand that this is not a motivation problem. This is not an effort problem. You have the motivation. You're putting in the effort. You're smart. You're very bright student. There's something else going on and it has to do with what's actually going on in your brain.

Let's talk about it. We're talking about cognitive load. So there is a concept in cognitive science called cognitive load. theory. And it was first described in 1988 by researcher John Sweller. And At its very basic premise, it's pretty simple. Your brain can only process a limited amount of information at one time. So this processing space is your working memory and it is very limited.

Your working memory is not the same as your long-term memory. Your working memory is what you can actively think about and juggle and make sense of in that moment. And research suggests that you can only hold about three to five new pieces of information at once before things start to fall apart. But here's the thing. In nursing school, you're learning way more than three to five new things.

You're learning pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, lab values, medications, patient safety, infection prevention, assessment, nursing priorities, and a whole lot more. And it's coming at you all at once, and your brain simply cannot process that much new information efficiently.

And when your working memory limit is exceeded, a few things happen. First off, you're gonna stop processing things effectively. You're gonna stop processing information effectively. You start forgetting things quickly. You may feel confused, even if you have studied, or you have a hard time applying what you know. So think about it. Think about that time, and we've all been there where you're maybe you're a little studied out, maybe you're just not.

at the top of your game that day and you're you're studying something, you're reading a paragraph, and you have to go back and look at it again because you have no idea what you just read, right? That is your brain saying, I am full right now. I'm not processing new information right now and you need to go take a Working memory can definitely get exceeded. And those are some of the signs that it's happening. And it's not because you're not 1000% capable

It's simply because your brain's overloaded. And here's what a lot of students don't realize is that effort. As in time spent, effort does not equal learning. You could spend all day studying for a pharmacology exam, but if your brain is overloaded, you're simply not going to learn and retain that information in any meaningful way. Learning depends on whether your brain has that capacity to process the information that you're putting into it.

So when faced with that feeling and it can feel very overwhelming, most students respond by trying to do more. And that's a very natural and it seems very logical response. But this creates a problem where you're adding more information into a system that's already reached its limit rather than Helping your brain, this actually increases your cognitive load. And then when your brain's overloaded, you're learning.

as you've probably surmised by now, is severely limited. And this is why you could study all weekend for an exam. But if you don't take measures to reduce cognitive load, you still can walk into that exam feeling unsure.

So, to address the problem of cognitive load, you first need to understand that there are actually three types, three main types of cognitive load. And they're happening basically at the same time. So those are intrinsic load, extraneous load, and germane load. So intrinsic load is the difficulty of the material itself. And nursing school by design, by its nature,

has a high intrinsic load. We really can't do much about that. Like I said, the information is challenging. Then we have extraneous load. Extraneous load is the unnecessary mental burden created by how you're studying. And this is where things can really go off track for a lot of students.

Things like rewriting things over and over, rereading things when they're not making sense the first time and then thinking they'll make sense the second time. And sometimes it does, but if you're reading it over 10 times and it's not making sense, you're just loading on that extraneous load. Maybe it's using too many resources, studying without a clear focus. That's a huge one. Or jumping between topics and task switching.

All of these things add to extraneous load without actually improving your learning. And this is where most students struggle. And the good news is though, it's also the most fixable. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. And then we have germaine load. Germaine load is the mental effort that actually builds understanding. And this is the good kind. We want germaine load. This is where connections.

are made where patterns start to click and clinical thinking and clinical reasoning develop. And this again is that good kind of cognitive load. And this is what you want your brain to be doing. So examples of germane load include connecting symptoms to pathophysiology or recognizing clinical patterns. Maybe you're you're starting to recognize clinical patterns of a patient deteriorating so that you can catch it much earlier.

And applying knowledge in scenarios, which every nursing school exam question is a scenario that you need to apply. knowledge from a lot of different areas into that question. So germane load is what we want. The problem is that students get so overwhelmed with the intrinsic and the extraneous load that there's often no room for the germane load and no room for actual learning. And What happens is the student feels busy But not affectionate.

or they feel overwhelmed with everything that they're having to do, but they're not progressing like they should. And that can be an incredibly frustrating and demoralizing and demotivating place to be. And I don't want you to be there. I want you to be excited about your career choice and about all the wonderful learning that is part of this amazing profession. So let's talk about some things.

that increase cognitive load. So that you can recognize them and maybe take some measures to do things a little bit differently. And a lot of these things are things that students might do without even realizing. So give yourself a minute and think about it very objectively if you're doing any of these things or guilty of doing any of these things. I've raised up my hand. I have been guilty of these things myself.

So one is relying heavily on memorization. Without true understanding, memorizing things creates basically just a lot of isolated data points that Don't necessarily have meaningful connections. So the result is that working memory gets overwhelmed very, very quickly. leaving no room for that germane load or that actual learning. And I'll talk a little bit more about memorization later on. There are definitely a few things in nursing school you just have to memorize.

But knowing when to apply memorization is absolutely So that's one, relying heavily on memorization. Another is lack of prioritization. When everything feels equally important, it's really difficult for students to know where to put their efforts. And this leads to trying to study everything equally. And as you can imagine, this leads to overload. Another thing that increases cognitive load is constant task switching.

So switching between tasks increases cognitive load and drastically reduces efficiency. Studies show that the mental blocks that are created when shifting between tasks can cost as much as forty percent of productive. Time. So that's a big one. And then another one is using too many resources. If you're utilizing too many resources, this forces your brain

To reconcile inconsistencies between all those sources and could lead to, in many, many cases, more questions than answers. And it's also can contribute to that constant task switching as well. Vi älskar Audio av alla års modeller. Därför finns Audi Baservice för bilar från 2018 eller tidigare. För 2495 kronor ger vi. Samtidigt får du väga assistans i ett helt år. Boka på Audi.se

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Search Baby Led Weaning wherever you listen to podcasts and happy feeding. So we've talked about the three types of cognitive load, intrinsic load, which was that just the material itself being really challenging, extraneous load is is a lot of times related to how the studying is conducted and then germane load is making connections and what we want. And then we've talked a little bit about things that increase cognitive load. Now let's talk about what we're gonna do instead.

Basically, now that you understand that the issue is not your effort, because your effort is amazing. It's not your intelligence because yes, you are very bright. And it has nothing to do with how dedicated or motivated you are. It's all about that cognitive load. So let's look at how to reduce it. And and what I mean by this specifically is what does this look like when you sit down to study?

So step one. When you're studying, start with one core concept. Instead of opening your textbook or your notes and thinking, I need to get through all of this tonight, I have 40 pages to read. Shift your thinking to what is one key concept I can focus on right now? And what you're doing here is something called schema formation, which is just a fancy way of saying you're grouping information into meaningful chunks so your brain doesn't have to process everything.

you know, all at the same time and load a ton of information in there that it doesn't really know what to do with. So for example, let's say that you are learning about heart failure. Instead of sitting down to study heart failure, start with understanding one core concept. Start with that blood flow pathway through the heart, for example.

When you understand that pathway through the heart and the lungs, then you're focusing on one core concept that is at the basis of pretty much everything else that you're going to be. learning about heart failure. You're chunking that information together so that when you move on and your next chunk is understanding the pathophysiology.

Then guess what? That pathophysiology makes a ton more sense because you have this underlying anatomy and physiology that you've already committed to your memory. So focusing on one core concept and building things in layers. So that's step one.

Step two is you have to take measures to actively reduce that extraneous load. This means not jumping between topics like, oh, I'm bored studying the blood flow pathway. I'm going to move on to something else. You really should only be moving on to something else when you've got that one core concept down. Or if you notice that you're not retaining, it's not time to jump to something else to study. It's time to take a break.

The key thing here, not jumping between topics and also not jumping around from one resource to another, and also not trying to capture every single detail. Instead, narrow your focus. and ask yourself, what actually matters here? This reduces that extraneous load, which is all that unnecessary mental effort that doesn't actually improve your learning, but makes you feel really busy and makes you feel productive, even though you probably aren't being productive.

So if you're new or you're not sure what actually matters, say when you're studying like a disease condition, for example, I would say start by using using the latte method, the straight A nursing latte method. It's a simplified method for understanding what information a nurse actually needs to focus on. And it's an excellent, excellent way to reduce extraneous load. So using a framework like that.

Really helps reduce decision fatigue because you're not constantly wondering what to focus on. You already have that structure. If you've never heard of the latte method, then you're probably kind of new to this podcast. So hey, welcome. Um, you can go back and listen to basically any episode where I discuss a disease condition and see it in action. You can also go back to episode 21 where I explain it step by step. It's very easy. Don't feel overwhelmed. I promise it will make your life once.

thousand percent better. All right, so that is step.

trying to reduce extraneous load any way that you can. Now step three is to build understanding before adding details. As you review information, I want you to get curious and Ask questions that help you build understanding. You're looking at the why does this happen? What does this cause? What patterns do I see? How does this relate to other concepts? Those types of things are how you're gonna train your brain to make connections.

truly understand the the core underlying concept because you'll be applying these throughout all of your nursing school education and all of your nursing school career. And by doing this and building that understanding, you're not just memorizing isolated bits of information. This is what we call that germane load, that mental effort that actually builds those connections and that pattern recognition and that clinical. reasoning ability. This is the real learning.

And then step four is to layer in the details. We do need the details, right? We have to know like the nitty-gritty. So once you have that foundational understanding of a concept, now it's time to add in the details, adding in the assessments. Findings that you're looking for, the signs and symptoms, the labs, the medications, the interventions. These details will actually make sense because you're learning them in the context of something that you already have an understanding of.

This works because your brain now has some structure to attach that information to instead of holding all these isolated bits of information separately. In other words, that information has somewhere to go. It's like organizing your closet, right? Like I've got a bin for my socks and a bin for my pajamas. So you've got a place for all the information to go. And it's more likely to be relegated. where we want it, which is long term memory.

And then step five is, this is a big one, know when to stop. This is the step that a lot of people ignore, and it's one of the most important. The goal is to stop before your brain is completely exhausted, before you're completely overwhelmed and frustrated. Once that cognitive overload hits,

Learning quality is gonna, it's gonna drop. It's gonna drop significantly. And further studying honestly is a waste of time. It's a waste of effort. You could be soaking in the tub, listening to your favorite music. or taking a nap or going for a walk or playing with your cat instead. Like you could be doing so many other things that are going to be so much more useful for you.

At that time, because continuing to study when your brain is full, when you're exhausted, when you've hit cognitive overload is absolutely not effective. At that point, your working memory is maxed out. Your brain cannot process more information effectively. So instead, structure your studying into shorter focused sessions with breaks in between rather than long, tedious, and unproductive, you know, all nighters or anything like that. If you're thinking, yeah, this this makes sense, but I

not really sure how to apply this, how to do this consistently. You know, I understand that students can get stuck between understanding like a concept like this and not really being sure how to apply it because When you're in nursing school, you're told what to study, but you're not really told how to prioritize it, organize it.

And reduce the overload and overwhelm that comes with it. So I created something for you called the Nursing School Survival Blueprint. It's a free resource. I will put a link to it in the episode notes. You can also go to straight a nursing student.com slash blueprint to get this guide.

Because everything that we've talked about today, reducing the cognitive load, focusing on what matters, building understanding instead of memorizing, I no one expects you to figure this out on your own. So I created this blueprint that walks you through.

Studying with intention, reducing cognitive load in your study sessions, and making sense, like how all this helps you make sense of what you're learning. So you're not stuck in that cycle of Studying all the time, not feeling like you're getting anywhere, thinking the obvious answer is to study more. really imping up your cognitive load, getting more exhausted, more overwhelmed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you can get that at straight a nursingstudent.com slash blueprint.

Again, it's completely free. It's a really great place to start if you're looking for a more structured way to approach nursing school, whether you're in it already or starting your program soon. So if you take one thing away from this, I want you to know that you're not behind. Your brain is simply overloaded. And when you can reduce that load, learning gets a lot easier. Not because nursing school changed, because it ain't ever gonna change, but because your approach.

Changed. So I hope this has been helpful for you. And I will be talking with you again soon. Bye for now. This podcast is brought to you by Straight A Nursing, a proud member of the Airwave Media Network. For more educational podcasts, Check out airwavemedia.com and for more nursing-related content, go to straightanursing student.com.