✨ Nursing school prep series day 7: What to expect in your first semester ✨

Hey y'all. My name is Shana and I'm a nursing instructor and I'm doing a series on preparing for nursing school and this is day 8. I think. And today we're going to be covering what to expect in your first semester. So all programs do vary, but they're pretty similar in content. So we cover the same content, but may just go about it a little bit differently. But we're going to be talking about in this video basically like what to expect content wise, okay? So the first thing is you're going to learn foundational nursing concepts such as hygiene, infection control, safety is very big, medication administration, documentation, just those foundational nursing concepts for you to build on throughout nursing school. The second thing you can expect is nursing school exams. Intimidating, I know, but they're really not as bad if you know what to expect. Okay? So I'm going to be talking about what to expect in nursing school exams soon in the next couple of videos. But you will have nursing school exams, they're normally cumulative. So you'll have mid-term exams and final exams that are normally cumulative. Okay? So your third thing to expect is labs and or clinicals. Some nursing colleges go to clinicals in the first semester, some do not. That is dependent on your college. Where I went to nursing school, we did not go to clinicals in the first semester, we were all in the labs, but where I teach at now, we do go to clinicals after mid-term. Okay? So what you can expect in labs is learning skills like Foley insertion, vital signs, IV starts, assessment, sterile gloving, bed bathing, linen changes, like making the bed correctly, all those types of things you'll learn in the lab. And in clinicals, if you do go, expect like basic care things like communicating with the patient, bed baths, linen changes, assessment and vitals. Sometimes you may do medication administration in first semester, depending on your nursing school. Okay? So the fourth thing you can expect is skills checkoffs. One of the most times that I see my students like so anxious is skills checkoffs, okay? And skills checkoffs are when you return demonstrate a skill that you learned in lab. So take IV start for example. So you go to lab and you learn your IV start, okay? And then you will be able to practice some and either same day or soon after, you'll return demonstrate. You'll either be graded on that or you'll either pass fail like complete, incomplete. Um, when you do your skills checkoffs. I promise they're not as bad as people make them out to be. Um, I remember being very nervous for skills checkoffs, but truthfully, we're just looking to see if you're safe and competent enough to attend the skill with us in clinical. Okay? The fifth thing you can expect is a dosage calculation exam. So I'm going to go over dosage calculation later on, but you're not only just have to learn it, you're going to have to do it. You're going to have to be tested on it. Okay? Most colleges have a separate dosage calculation exam, um, to make sure that you are good enough to go to clinical. Okay? Um, where I am at now, we have to pass the dosage calculation exam where I'm at now before we go to clinical. Okay? So, um, my last thing you can expect is some form of benchmark testing. This is usually you'll see ATI or HESI, those are some common ones. Kaplan is another one. But whatever it may be, you'll probably have some form of benchmark testing, and this is separate from your unit exams. Um, and it just shows cumulatively what you've learned throughout the course. Okay? Those tests are usually harder than your unit tests because they are based off of the Inclex and again, are to see like where you are benchmark wise, um, with the whole USA or wherever you're at, um, you know, the next week. So yeah, that's a little bit about what to expect in your first semester. If you have any questions about anything I talked about or if this content will be covered or not, comment down below and I'll be sure to answer back to you. But tomorrow we're going to be talking about what to bring to class with you in nursing school. So, um, y'all let me know if you have any questions and have a great day.