Nursing is a profession that requires good cognitive skills and hands-on experience to ensure patients recover fully. As you pursue your nursing course, you keep worrying if you will pass your exams and apply what you read in real-life situations. Adopt effective study habits for nursing students to get top-notch outcome.
So you engross yourself in books, ensure you attend your lectures and practical programs. However, you realize that balancing between your studies and engaging in non-learning activities seems daunting. If you are wondering how to make it out of nursing school with good grades, apply the following study strategies.
1- Only Process What Your Mind Can Endure
When studying nursing concepts, the temptation of absorbing everything you are trying to read can make you think you are doing the right thing. That only makes you an amateur. Your struggles to process everything you read can be thwarted. While this might seem like a victim mentality, in the real sense, cramming makes you look like a person on a volunteering mission, which doesn’t work with the current system.
Before deciding how much content you want to process, think of nursing as a passive career. It would be best if you came up with a realistic plan to avoid burnout. Help your brain work effectively by choosing what to absorb and what to ditch.
2- Embrace ADPIE as Your Solid Study Plan
ADPIE is an acronym that represents five elements of nursing which are to assess, diagnose, plan, implement and evaluate. As a nurse, assessing how course material relates to everyday life is crucial. The diagnosing element helps you identify your study weaknesses.
Planning helps you set your mode of action to turn your weaknesses into strengths. The implementation supports planning, assessment and diagnosis. Finally, an evaluation strategy calculates how much you have absorbed.
ADPIE is more of transforming what you have learned into real-life scenarios. If you apply the five elements in your studies, it is easy to explain nursing concepts without referring to your books repeatedly.
3- Reduce the Bulk of Coursework Information
Throughout your nursing school, you will come across tons of materials with information to mold your career. However, the average human brain can only accommodate what is relevant. So if a specific course churns bulky information, consider breaking it up into smaller units.
For example, if you are currently covering coursework like anesthesiology, you might realize it has various topics. They may include the types of anesthesia, interactions, expected side effects and nursing anesthesiology. While all the topics are crucial, it would be best to pick out what you can digest.
4- Diversify Your Study Locations
A typical nursing study program might revolve around going to lecture halls, laboratories, delivery rooms, and going back home. Such a routine might get you bored. It would help if you diversified your studying locations for a change.
Today, the Corona Virus pandemic restricts social interactions and encourages people to stay at home. Instead of seeing this as a measure to prevent you from engaging in group discussions, use it as a chance to study in different places alone. So, if today you read your coursework in your living room, try to schedule your following study location in your backyard.
5- Know Your Learning Personality
You have colleagues who will barely attend lectures or present their tasks on time, but when the time for exams reaches, they end up scoring the best grades. It makes you feel like you are not worthy enough of being a student, yet you have learning materials that churn helpful information on study skills required by nurses.
However, learning strategies work differently. Perhaps your colleague does not have an attention span that allows them to sit still in a lecture hall for 40 minutes. So they find it easier to read online. Therefore, you should find out what type of student you are. If you find reading books overwhelming, go for other strategies like group studies or e-learning.
The right studying approach can shape your nursing destiny
It takes time, dedication and solid school habits to be a good nursing student. However, nursing is a hands-on practice that will continue to mold your career. Once you graduate, you will notice that most of your habits from school will impact your profession and make you a better nurse. Finally, landing a nursing job does not mean learning is over. Keep using your good habits to learn emerging concepts.
