hey guys this is Dave from Nursejanx and in today's video I want to go over a
few tips and tricks that you guys can use to help you pass your NCLEX on the
first try one of the first things that I feel like is very important is you guys
really need to analyze these questions in a very specific way the NCLEX is a
very different test and you might be used to taking in nursing school
sometimes it can feel like the NCLEX is not exactly a knowledge test instead
it's what they call a basic competency test and their main goal is not to make
sure that you know everything in a textbook but instead that you're going
to be a safe practicing nurse when you're out on the floor so one of the
things that all NCLEX questions usually boil down to is patient safety and that
is important so really whenever you're reading a question you have to look at
it in the lens of what is going to be the exact safest thing for this patient
in this question and so when you're reading all the possible answer choices
I want you guys to think which one here is going to be the safest for my patient
and usually that's going to be your correct choice another thing that gets
people hung up is a lot of times they want to reach out for help when they're
not exactly sure what to do and a lot of these NCLEX questions are going to
sometimes throw out the term contact the doctor on the NCLEX they really are
trying to engage your critical thinking in a way that's gonna let you think what
can I do first before I have to contact the doctor now I'm not gonna say that
the answer is never to contact the doctor because sometimes you have no
other choice but the NCLEX always wants to know what can you do as a nurse first
before you have to contact the doctor so generally speaking calling the doctor is
not going to be the correct answer choice and I don't want you guys to miss
that easy question the NCLEX might try to make you choose between two or more
really bad patient situations when people are circling the drain in various
ways but you always have to remember your ABCs because that is your priority
as far as how you're going to rank those patients in which one you need to deal
with first if someone has an airway or breathing problem you're gonna have to
rank them ahead of somebody who maybe who has like a hemodynamic instability
or you know a bleeding issue or a gunshot wound you know anybody who is in
respiratory distress is in immediate danger their life is in
complete jeopardy they need your attention first then it gets to other
things like hypotension and tachycardia but until those people are in that kind
of immediate life-threatening danger they are not going to rank as high as
the breathing issues and the NCLEX is going to test you about that so make
sure you don't miss those questions sometimes the NCLEX is going to give you
a question where you're probably not gonna have heard of the drug they're
talking about or the condition that they're talking about and at this point
the only thing you can really do is guess now I want to give you guys a
guessing strategy that I feel is going to be helpful because you might need to
use it if you guys have a question with multiple answers that are very similar
to one another and then one that is a little different you have to pay very
close attention to this because that one that might be different could easily be
your correct answer and in order to find out if you can identify one thing that
is kind of wrong in any of those very similar answers then you automatically
know that all of them are probably wrong and that you need to go with the one
that is a little bit different this is just a test taking strategy you can
apply this to pretty much any test but it will work on the NCLEX too and in the
event that you really don't know any better because you don't know the right
answer you don't know what they're talking about you're gonna have to go
for something like a guessing strategy and this just might save you on that
question another thing it might sound silly once again but don't forget about
Maslow's hierarchy of needs right if a patient is experiencing an issue with
their physiological needs right that's at the base of your pyramids you're
gonna have to give that patient priority if the patient is struggling with a
self-realization goal you know they've lost their job you will have to examine
for some potential life-threatening situations with that patient namely
suicide the NCLEX considers suicide a very life-threatening emergency so
definitely rank those patients high up on a priority list because that is
something that could put their life in immediate danger and sometimes the NCLEX
can be pretty sneaky about suicide they probably won't tell you very
clearly up front that this patient is experiencing suicidal ideation what they
might do instead is say that somebody's feeling kind of low and then they might
try to have you with other patients who seem like they're a little bit medically
compromised and try to see kind of where
ranked these patients but if you can identify signs and symptoms of suicide
without the outright statement of that patient being suicidal keep that in mind
that that patient is probably going to rank very highly on a priority list for
safety and once again the NCLEX is testing safety so you have to be sure to
rank that patient high up on your priority list some other questions that
you guys might experience are related to delegation generally speaking you're
going to want to do everything that you can as a nurse but you have to safely
delegate other tasks to people who are able to do them so you guys do have to
kind of know you know what you can safely delegate to others because there
will be some questions about that on your NCLEX then there are the select all
that apply questions the SATA questions these are everybody's favorite I say
that sarcastically because they suck the worst part I feel like is that you don't
know how many correct answers there are you just miss one or you identify one
that's not actually correct you're gonna miss the entire question you don't get
partial credit and I hate that generally speaking you're going to have more than
one correct answer and it's not going to be all I find that the average tends to
be somewhere in the middle if there are five choices on the question it might be
around three and that's just an average guys it might be two it might be four it
could be five or one but that's rare in most cases there's going to be more than
one correct choice and all of them are not going to be correct the end clicks
might do something else where they give you a bunch of answer choices and most
of them are correct but you have to find the most correct answer choice and I'm
sure you guys are used to that in school even and it's pretty similar on the
NCLEX to what you're going to want to find is the answer choice that is the
most thorough so for example if you have two choices on a test and they're both
essentially saying the same thing but one has just a little bit more
information a little bit more detail and somewhere in that detail there's no
mistakes you can identify then that one's going to be more likely the
correct answer than the shorter one now let's talk about some n flex tips that
aren't even related to necessarily the end clicks but just generalize
test-taking help and especially for this test I know you guys are going to be
going in here nervous and you're gonna have to do your best to relax and that
seems hard to do but what I recommend is you probably shouldn't do any questions
the day before and maybe even two days before study for a few weeks before your
test but just give your a little time off you don't want to have
questions in your head it's just going to freak you out one to two days of
questions right right before you take your NCLEX is not going to magically
make you that much smarter it's not probably going to be the difference
between you passing and failing the only thing that I feel like it might do is
freak you out and keep you anxious and make you doubt yourself that you don't
know what you're doing you have to consider this if you're sitting for the
NCLEX you've passed nursing school you have to know what you're doing to a
basic decree and the NCLEX is not testing to make sure that you're an
expert far from it they know that you're a beginner and they only want to make
sure that you have safe practice don't worry that you don't know everything in
your nursing books you don't have to all you have to know is what is the safest
choice for these patients in most circumstances and you should pass the
test when you're taking the NCLEX try not to get discouraged if you feel like
you're answering every other question wrong this can be completely okay in the
very beginning the tests usually starts you out around the passing threshold
that is to say the difficulty level of which you need to be at or above in
order to pass the NCLEX now if you get the first couple of questions correct
what it's going to do is each subsequent question you're going to have a harder
question and you're moving above the passing threshold so what you're gonna
have to do is just maintain that if you get every other question correct that
means you're going to stay there because if you get one question correct you're
gonna move up in the difficulty level if you get the next one wrong you're gonna
go right back down to where you were so if you continue in this way you're
essentially just seesawing like this around this passing threshold right here or
even above it let's say that you started out at the passing threshold you got the
next couple questions right and now you're getting one right one wrong one
right run wrong you see how you're staying above here this is let's say
you're passing threshold you're above it the whole time so long as you're getting
every other question right if you started out in the very beginning
getting a few questions right I just want you guys to visually kind of see
that it's okay if you're missing a lot of questions and you might feel like
you're going out of here with a horrible percent grade right because I know
you're used to taking tests where if you get every other question correct and the
other one wrong you're gonna get a 50% and you're gonna fail miserably but the
NCLEX is a different test it's an adaptive test
and they don't need you to have a good percent all they need you to have is
something above that passing threshold when you finish inconsistency so the
NCLEX is going to cut you off at a number it can be anywhere between 75 and
265 it really doesn't matter so many questions as you get the only reason
that people generally get drawn out is because their testing might be
considered erratic by the computer that is to say let's say you get some really
difficult questions correct and then you get some really easy ones wrong it's
gonna confuse the computer because it on one hand it thinks wow you're really
smart you're getting all these really hard questions correct and then on the
other hand it's like you know how on earth are you missing these really easy
questions I'm confused so I know I have to drag you out the computer wants to
have a confidence interval I believe of 95 percent or more before it will cut
you off so if you're very consistent and you've been consistent by the time
you're at 75 questions the computer is probably going to have a really good
idea of where your testing level is good or bad most people who get cut off at 75
will pass and that's just because most people who take the NCLEX pass you
almost have a 9 to 1 chance of passing just by statistics alone ok now if you
get drawn it to 265 once again this is not to say that you failed your test
you're probably still gonna pass it based on the statistics alone like I
said 9 to 1 all most people who take the NCLEX pass the NCLEX so I guess one of
the things I'm trying to tell you guys is you know have confidence don't worry
about the number don't worry about the end clicks itself the testing center
area is stressful you go in you know you're taking this big test
they take your fingerprints they might take your picture these days who knows
they send you into a room they say you can't talk you can't write you're being
observed the entire time it's stressful all right even what you have to do is to
remain calm just focus on some deep-breathing exercises close your eyes
for a minute just try to settle yourself because if you're anxious you're gonna
make mistakes you need to be calm and collected otherwise you're not going to
be thinking as clearly and I know that's asking a lot but hey it's easier than
asking you to memorize a complete textbook all right you should know what
you're doing coming into this test and you need to maintain that confidence
because without it you're probably going to get into some trouble so guys I hope
these tips help if you have other tips let us know down in the comments we'd
love to hear your tips so you can help share with everyone else who's watching
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next one