How to Pass NCLEX RN After Failing

A  reddit user who failed nclex 3 times before passing nclex  offers the following tips on how to pass nclex

As a preface, I just want to thank this sub reddit for their countless resources and advices. I’ve failed three times and never gave up because the stories here were so inspiring and it always motivated me to taste the same, sweet success.

There are countless advice here that overlap so I will try to list the things that aren’t talked about enough. This is my way of giving back to the community that helped me so much.

• Master the basics. During my three attempts, plenty of questions that I’ve missed were some of the most basic questions. So basic that it pissed me off because these are things we learn during first year even and it was always on the tip of my tongue so I end up guessing. Things like typical findings from a third stage ulcer, where to start ausculating on the abdomen first, etc. Plenty of free points here you could hit.
• “Why?” One of the biggest shifts in my study habits is asking why. Some people are gifted with memorization and some are not. Unfortunately for me, I fall in the latter category. Anytime youre reading a rational, ask yourself why?
• For example, “Salt substitutes cannot be given to someone with acute kidney injury.” Why? Because salt substitutes contain potassium. The old me would’ve stopped there but dive deeper. Why can’t we give potassium? Because in acute kidney injury, the kidney cannot filter properly therefore it retains potassium. Ask further, why can’t it filter properly? You get the gist.
• Master your electrolytes and lab values. These play such a huge role on a lot of the questions on the NCLEX. I mastered general concepts during my first attempts but fell short on my electrolytes. I didn’t exactly know what they did. Once I mastered these, learning the general concepts have become a breeze.
• Master the equipments. Echoing from the previous point, these are often understudied but actually shows up on the NCLEX a lot. I’m not kidding. The best way to study these is to study by system and jot down all the important equipment they used. For example in GI, there are a ton of different tubes. Study them separately, their purpose, proper nursing interventions, complications and you’ll get a ton of free points from hitting these on the exam.
• Master the anatomy. During my first three attempts, I “had an idea” of the anatomy and how things work. One of the biggest changes I did was mastering the anatomy of the body. Things connected eventually and everything made much more sense. Visualize and imagine. For example, imagine yourself as the food, traveling down the esophagus, into the stomach, into the small intestines where it passes through the pancreatic duct, into large intestines then anus. You’ll realize how connected everything is in the body.
• Master the downer/upper concept. Medications are probably the hardest thing I had to study. It was too overwhelming. But what helped me deal with this is forgeing the list of the symptoms and adverse effects and understanding the principle of upper and downers. For example, if you take a benzodiazepine, what typical symptoms would you see? Well benzo’s slow things down so it’s a.. downer. In a SATA, you will often see a list of upper and downer symptoms. You will hit more questions if you pick all the downers. If you’re weak in memorization like me then lists do me no good. I applied this concept and it helped me greatly.
• Master your prefix and suffixes. Another underrated advice that helped me. There are so many words in nursing that it can sometimes cause make you mix some terms up. That will affect the way you answer questions greatly. Master this so you don’t spend time (like me) trying to remember what the hell the word meant, then spending another portion of my time answering questions.
• Invest the time. Probably a typical advice but the best advice nonetheless. During my first three attempts, I was studying but I wasn’t studying hard enough. Well how hard is hard? That is up to you. Just know that you will need to invest hours into this. You cannot half ass it. Create a schedule and stick to it. Treat it like a job. Lay off the drugs, partying, drinking, hanging out. This little bit of sacrifice will be worth it in the end.
• Start strong in the exam. My last two advice is going to petrain to the exam itself. As someone who sat in that damn chair for 3 separate occasions, I can tell you what worked for me in the last attempt.
• Start strong. Yes you prepare for 265 but do your absolute best during the first 75 questions. The goal is the finish early. Why? Because during the first three attempts, I hit 265 three times. I can tell you. By the 150-200th question, your brain is absolutely depleted. It’s not that I didn’t know the content as well. It’s that my brain was so tired, it made the most obvious question/answers seem so difficult. It was frustrating, mind numbing and annoying because I studied for it but my brain just wouldn’t let me think anymore.
• Confidence. This ties in with my last point. In my last attempt, I passed with 163 questions. I was no longer jaded when the exam didnt stop at 75. I knew I started strong cause I was hitting submit with confidence. The next 90 or so questions, I threw all doubts away, took a deep breath and just did the following: read the question, look at my options, cancel the obvious wrong answers and picked and submitted with confidence.
• Part of me did it to avoid the mind numbing effect you feel sitting in that chair for hours and other part of me knew that you cannot answer them all. You’ll get questions where you don’t know the damn medication they mentioned or a disease you’ve never heard of. I did the same thing: read it, saw my options, if I didnt know anything, I guessed and moved on.
• Eventually you’ll realize that you will hit questions that you know through your studying and you’ll just take the loss from questions you have no idea how to answer. Do not dwell on these, it will deplete your energy and affect the questions you absolutely know how to answer.

Long post but I’m hoping this helps someone one. Cheers future nurses