How I Studied for NCLEX-RN

      Even though I have eight-year experiences as a nurse in Japan, NCLEX-RN was not easy for me at all. I needed to make great efforts to study for it until I passed the exam. I'm going to share with you what I studied for NCLEX.

      When I started learning English in the U.S. four years ago, I couldn't speak, read, and write in English at all. Even though I loved working as a nurse in Japan, I gave up becoming a nurse in the U.S. because of my poor English. However, after I started going to English school, I started thinking that I wanted to be a nurse again. At that time, my goal was not realistic in everyone's eyes considering my English level because I was always a student who had the bottom grade at English school. That's why the first thing I did was improving my English skill. I seriously studied English for a year at English school. Then, I transferred to a local college to continue to study English. Then, six month later, I started studying for nursing by myself aside from English study.

     In August 2010, I purchased NCLEX-RN Incredibly Easy 5th edition because it seemed easy. However, it was very difficult for me at that time indeed because there were many difficult vocabularies. It took me an hour to study one page! Soon after, I changed the way I studied. I decided to study for Medical Terminology first. I purchased Quick & Easy Medical Terminology. This book taught simplified medical language. I learned suffixes, combining form, and prefixes of medical language. I also studied and practiced with a CD-ROM many times. It took me nine months to finish this 380-page textbook. Now, I am glad to have studied this textbook first because the medical languages I learned logically are unforgettable and helped with my nursing study greatly.

Quick & Easy Medical Terminology

        After studying Medical Terminology, I started studying NCLEX-RN Incredibly Easy again. This textbook has over 6500 questions, and I did all the questions five times. I also studied what I didn't know before thoroughly and wrote them down on my notes. Because I was taking ESL classes and needed a great effort for my numerous assignments, I often didn't have time to study this textbook. I didn't study for six months or so. That's why it took me over a year and a half to fish doing everything five times.

NCLEX-RN Incredibly Easy 5th edition

     After I stopped taking ESL classes four months ago, I was able to solely focus on my nursing study. I purchased NCLEX-RN 10,000 - Powered by PrepU, which is online study program. It provides adaptive style quizzes. Actually, it was much harder than I expected. Many contents of the quizzes were not what I had studied before. I did over 6,000 questions for two months until my first NCLEX. After failing the exam, I thought that it is not important to do a lot of questions for me. I concluded that the reason why I failed in my first attempt was my lack of English vocabularies and Pharmacology which was my weakness. That's why I only did about 1,000 questions for next two months until second NCLEX.

NCLEX-RN 10,000 - Powered by PrepU

     After my first NCLEX, I purchased this Sanders Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination. This textbook is very well organized for NCLEX study. I went through the entire textbook which has 1,140 pages in two months. I also did an 100-question exam once a week with accompanying CD-ROM to know how much I improved. I also listened to Audio Review for Pharmacology, Acid Base Balance, and Fluid and Electrolyte many times. This audio program made me familiar with these contents. Obviously, this textbook is the best I've ever used!

Sanders Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination

     For studying Pharmacology, I purchased Mosby's Pharmacology Memory NoteCards. This is good for visual learners like me since it has many colorful cartoon pictures. However, this is not enough to study for Pharmacology. There are countless numbers of medications available, and it is impossible to know all of them. However, I tried to memorize as many medications as I could. What I did was that I did Pharmacology quizzes with accompanying CD-ROM of Sanders every day and wrote down what I needed to memorize on my flash cards, and I reviewed my flash cards every day. In addition, I tried to memorize suffixes with using my flash cards. I ended up gaining confidence on Pharmacology.

Mosby's Pharmacology Memory NoteCards

     After my first NCLEX, the things I worked hard the most was memorizing vocabularies. Because I am not American, I had a lack of English vocabularies. While studying for nursing, I always wrote down vocabularies I didn't know if I found ones. Then, I reviewed my flash cards every day. I probably memorized over 2,500 vocabularies.

     As the number of my flash cards increased, I needed to spend many hours for reviewing them. However, I preferred reviewing them than doing online quizzes, which is NCLEX-RN 10,000 - Powered by PrepU. Because I was able to focus on studying my weaknesses which were vocabularies and Pharmacology, these were not my weaknesses in the end. On my second NCLEX, I only saw a few vocabulary I didn't know, and I did only a few question related to Pharmacology because NCLEX is adaptive exam and I think my performance of Pharmacology was well on the exam.

     For the past four months, I only studied for NCLEX. I studied for it for 6 to 9 hours every day for first two months, but after that I did it for 2 to 4 hours a day. For the final week, I did it for an hour or so a day because I was very nervous for the exam and was not able to concentrate for my study. That's why I just reviewed my flash cards on my last week.

     NCLEX is not easy at all. However, if you study consistently, I'm sure that you will pass some day. The key is not giving up. If you know what your weak contents are, then focus on studying them. They will end up being familiar with you, and you will overcome your difficulties.