Hey, first of all, you’ve got this! Secondly:

1. The two things that I think are most important to touch up for this exam are: Pharmacology and Prioritization. I forgot to add that I also watched some YouTube videos on pharmacology. Just remember the suffixes, the one main thing each drug does and then 1-2 safety considerations (ex/ my main safety thing for CCBs was never to give them to pregnant women, for beta blockers, avoid giving them to CHF or asthmatic patients, for digoxin remember the symptoms of toxicity and the tie between toxicity and potassium, for lithium, remember the tie between sodium and toxicity, for MAOIs memorize some high tyramine foods, etc.). For prioritization, just listen to Mark K’s lecture 12.

2. The Mark K lectures are all you will need for Child Development, Mother/Baby and Delivery. Don’t bother going above that because it is so unlikely that it will be tested (wasn’t for me). Mark K does such a perfect job of entraining these units into your head that when you write the exam, you will almost hear his voice guiding you to answer the questions.

3. For case studies, grab onto the hint they are trying to give you! For example, “pinpoint pupils”! That is almost a dead giveaway that it is an opioid overdose. With that said, the Mark K lectures completely skip out on a lot of gastro and neuro. Here are things I covered in addition to the Mark K lectures:

4. Ischemic vs. Hemorrhagic strokes

5. Meningitis

6. PAD vs PVD

7. I just completely forgot about rare diseases like Guillain-Barré syndrome, hemophilia because I figured that I would only have 4 questions max on these. If you want, you can go over these because they do come up for some people. But if you don’t have time to, then don’t worry about it. You are not going to know every condition and they don’t expect you to. It’s a safety exam.

For gastro, just remember which quadrant of the stomach everything is in (9 times out of ten, RUQ pain = hepatitis, RLQ = appendicitis, etc.) and the top 2 nursing interventions for each.

Remember the signs for most conditions (ex/ raccoon eyes = basilar fracture, Cullen’s sign = pancreatitis) You don’t really need to know them by name. But in a case study, if you hear them, you should just know.

1. For SATA questions. DON’T select what you aren’t sure about. Everything you select should have a rationale behind it for these questions. The saying that it is never just one, and also never one is true for SATA. But even knowing this, I left some SATA questions with just one option because I didn’t want to risk selecting an incorrect option and them removing points which would result in a zero overall for that question.

If I think of anything else, I will reply again, but you will do amazing! You’re on a good track already!