Congratulations, you have gotten into the nursing program.
Now… your first hurdle… the dreaded Nursing Fundamentals class.
Nursing Fundamentals is a difficult class. And, as you take Nursing Fundamentals, you want to show your ability to succeed as a nurse by excelling in this class! In this post, we are going to share with you how to study for Nursing Fundamentals.
The Basics of Studying for Nursing Fundamentals
Although our Fundamentals of Nursing is a great tool to help you prepare for your exams, there are some basics you can do to ensure that you get the most out of your class.
- Learn to Skim – If you haven’t practiced the art of skimming yet, the beginning of your nursing program is a great time to do it. When reading articles or books, look for headings, lists, and bold or italics to see what may be important. You don’t have time to read every word out loud, so learn to look for what’s important.
- Create the Right Study Environment – Your sweet study spot requires some experimentation. Do you work well with music? People? Quiet? Outside? In a windowless room? Find what works and create that environment for study.
- Ask for Help – Whether you use online forums like the Nurses SubReddit or tutoring and faculty resources in your school, passing in this program requires you look for help.
- Use College Resources – Colleges face a high attrition rate among nursing students. It is a difficult degree but you have already done the hardest part, getting in. The college has an interest in seeing you succeed so find their resources and use them.
- Use Outside Resources – Whether you use a website to do pre-testing and use additional study skills or ask an experienced nurse in your circle of influence, outside resources can be a lifesaver when facing a difficult course.
Website Resources to Pass Nursing Fundamentals
Besides forums like Reddit and AllNurses, our Learning Management System (LMS) gives you additional stress-free resources for studying and passing Nursing Fundamentals.
What is an LMS?
A learning management system, or LMS is a software that is designed to facilitate the best of modern learning techniques into a globally accessible environment.
For nursing students, a good LMS gives you the ability to access video and audio presentation of content, digital flash cards, mnemonics, and other devices to help you learn in a lower stress environment than school.
Is an LMS a Video Platform?
An LMS is not just a video platform. With pre-exams, memes, and other learning tools, our LMS gives you more resources than you can get just vegging out on videos on YouTube.
What’s The Difference Between an LMS and a Website?
There are many different kinds of websites, and there are learning management systems that are not on a website. However, to understand Nursing.com the answer is that our LMS is our website.
How to Study for Nursing Fundamentals: Nursing.com Provides the Following
Nursing.com helps nursing students pass nursing fundamentals through our Fundamentals of Nursing course that reduces information overload, cuts down on hours of study per week, and provides our students with a high pass rate.
Our courses use the best of modern learning to help you study better.
Multi-Modal Content
With thick books and faculty’s lectures, most Fundamentals of Nursing classes miss many of the different forms of content we have accessible to us in the 21st century.
Video
Our short videos give you easily digestible lectures on your fundamentals. We cover basics of leadership and psychology, nursing practice and care, dosage calculation and more.
Written
Each module has its own written materials to help you understand the standards necessary to pass your fundamentals course and prepare to enter the nursing world.
Audio
Each video is taught by a world-class expert in nursing Listen to them at increased speeds while you are working out or at other times so that you start to digest the information you need to pass your exams.
Interactive
Our lessons, cheat sheets, and instructions give you more than just information. We give you the opportunity to practice your learning through our LMS before you have to put pen to paper in your exams.
Online Flash Cards
If you have ever tried memorizing something without a flashcard and with one, you know the value they provide for memorization and recall.
Our interactive questions are in a flashcard format so that you are able to establish visual recall as well as mental memorization of the facts you need to succeed in your classes.
Cheat Sheets
What is a cheat sheet?
Simply put, a cheat sheet is a reference chart useful for study which provides quick access to relevant information you are studying in the course.
How Many Cheatsheets in Fundamentals of Nursing?
Our Fundamentals of Nursing online course has 60 cheatsheets to help you study for every aspect of your course.
Mnemonics
A Mnemonic, according to MindTools, is a system “for re-packaging information, helping your brain to store it safely – and find it again at the right moment.”
Our mnemonics are a key part of how to study for nursing fundamentals. Using time-tested systems like mind-palaces, image and sensory association, and auditory association, we give you tips and tricks to remember relevant information even when you are in a high-stress test.
Images
Using an image to relate to class information, you will be able to recollect the right information when needed.
Location
Often called a mind-palace, using a location to “store” information can be an incredible way to help you retain information and access it when needed for a test.
Sensory Memory
When you remember the SOCK method for Pharmacology, you are attaching memory to an acronym that you might remember because of the sense of the word rolling off your tongue. You might remember SOCK because you don’t want to put your medicine in your sock drawer, connecting location with sensory memory.
When you want to learn and memorize to pass exams and prepare for a rewarding career, Mnemonics are great resources.
Pre-Tests
Each one of our courses has multiple pre-tests where you can practice tests with similar question sets and similar topics to most Fundamentals of Nursing courses.
Also… our pre-tests are designed to equip you for the NCLEX Licensure Exams.
The Syllabus: How to Study for Nursing Fundamentals
Fundamentals of Nursing is usually a 6 credit course that introduces everything you need to know about nursing at a basic level.
Patient care… clinicals… Documentation… Reporting…
All of these are covered in the Fundamentals of Nursing.
At Nursing.com, we cover 75 lessons in our Fundamentals of Nursing so that you learn and practice everything you need to know for Nursing Fundamentals.
We cover multiple lessons in 11 subject areas: professional Nursing Concepts, Safety & Infection, Documentation and Report, Prioritization and Delegation, Nursing Process and Critical Thinking, Psychosocial and Communication, Physiologic Integrity, Growth and Development, Nutrition and Fluid Balance, Oxygenation and Health Assessment.
These 11 Modules give you the information and practice you need to study for your fundamentals class.
And… these 11 Modules can help you reconnect with your nursing basics no matter how experienced or advanced you are in your nursing education and career.
Module 1 – Professional Nursing Concepts
At a ratio of 10 nurses per 3 doctors, nurses deliver much of the care that patients experience in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Because of this, nurses have to understand the laws, policies, and documents that are relevant to patient care.
Advanced directives…health promotion… HIPAA…Legal Issues
We cover 10 different sub-categories of nursing foundations in the first section.
Even if you don’t need all of these categories for your introductory nursing course, these resources are great to brush up on your fundamentals in the future.
Module 2 – Safety & Infection
The last thing you need as a nurse is an injury or illness caused by a mistake at work. This module helps you think through and plan ahead for safety and infectious diseases.
Why Safety?
Accidents are dangerous parts of caring for patients and caring for yourself. This module, with multimedia, lessons, and tests, will help you think through the high-risk activities that happen at work and that can happen with yourself and your patients.
Why Infection?
Biological safety is even more important than physical safety. If you do not manage infections, it can damage more than just one patient. An unmanaged infection can rapidly spread.
Module 3 – Documentation and Report
With proper documentation and reporting, you can track every relevant information for your patients. This module helps you learn how to do great nursing documentation and which reports to prioritize.
Your documentation becomes a part of your patients medical history. It is incredibly important that you learn and practice the correct documentation and reporting throughout your nursing degrees and years in practice after you graduate.
Module 3 provides you with up-to-date resources for documentation.
Module 4 – Prioritization & Delegation
Do First Things First.
This truism is incredibly important in the nursing profession. Module 4 covers all the basics of prioritization and delegation a nurse needs during the course of a long and fruitful career.
As you are getting through your fundamentals of nursing class or just needing a refresher in prioritization, this module will give you tools to do the first things first.
Module 5 – Nursing Process & Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is essential to good decision making. A good process removes many of the little decisions we have to make every day and prevents decision fatigue.
This module covers the essential parts of the nursing process including the Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement, and Evaluate cycle.
Assess
You will learn what to look for and where to collect data in order to provide good care for your eventual patients.
Our lessons are taught by nurses with experience who are also teachers in the nursing field so that going through this assessment lesson will help you be more prepared to both pass tests and assess medical problems in the real world.
Diagnose
Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, nurses take the data gathered from assessment and apply it to a practical judgement about patient-centered outcomes of care.
The diagnosis part of the nursing cycle is different than that of a physicial.
This lesson helps you begin to wrestle with the part you will play as a nurse in the diagnosis and care of patients.
Planning
Using the SMART goal standards, nurses have to work with patients to come up with a plan for their care. We will help you understand and implement how to care for your patients.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Action Oriented
- Realistic
- Timely
Learning from Nursing.com will give you additional tools to understand your planning so that you can provide better care for your patients…
after you pass this class, of course.
Implementation
You provide care for your patients.
This lesson helps you see how your implementation will follow the patient care you are studying in the rest of the course.
Assess, plan, implement, then Evaluate.
Evaluation
All lessons require evaluation in order to improve from one iteration to the next.
That is why we update our lessons regularly… and why you will need to learn about evaluation as a key part of your nursing process.
As you can see, the nursing process module (Module 5) is a key part of understanding your fundamental nursing skills.
Module 6 – Psychosocial – Communication
The lessons in this module are incredibly important to help you prepare for your nursing career.
If you are not prepared, your first crisis or abuse situation might be the reason you don’t remain a nurse.
The Fundamentals of Nursing is designed to prepare you for every situation and proper patient communication will be a part of every situation you may face.
Therapeutic Communication
The second lesson in this module, I believe it was one of the most important lessons a nursing student can learn. The ability to truly listen to those around us makes the difference between a stressful, tragic day and a victorious day.
While you are studying for a course, we provide our resources to not just get you through the test.
We want you to succeed as a nurse, and to end the nursing shortage.
As you practice therapeutic listening, as you practice connecting with your patients, you will be able to succeed more with them and with your coworkers.
Did we mention this module also has some pretty cool study tools?
Module 7 – Physiologic Integrity
Integrity, the art of being whole and complete…
As nurses, we are always dealing with moments when our patients are not complete and whole but we work with them to hopefully provide physiologic integrity.
The lessons in this module cover exercise and immobility, urinary and bowel eliminations, shock and hygiene.
Passing these lessons is essential to your career as a nurse because they cover so much of what you will be doing.
You are committing to care for people when they cannot care for themselves.
Our module will help you think and study about what you need to do in order to provide quality of life care for your patients.
Module 8 – Growth & Development
Growth and development sounds like a business plan.
Good news, it’s actually mental and social!
The lessons in this module cover cognitive and moral development, family structure, body image, and developmental issues specific to hospitalization.
Growth and Development gives you tools to understand how your patients will be facing different parts of their lives as they deal with growth, and the lack thereof.
These lessons cover some of the most significant theories in development, social science, behavioral science and more.
That’s a lot to cover in one module, so you might want to download some of our Mnemonics as you study this lesson.
Module 9 – Nutrition & Fluid Balance
Sometimes the difference between feeling good and feeling like you are about to die is a simple question of nutrition and fluids.
This module and these lessons in your nursing fundamentals course will introduce you to the diet and fluid tools you will be using throughout your career to ensure that patients have the best experience they possibly can.
You will face specialized nutrition needs, diseases that are primarily problems of nutrition and more.
With the help of this module, you will be able to prepare for both upcoming tests and the real-world tests you will face every day at work.
Module 10 – Oxygenation
A fish can’t breathe on land, and a human can’t survive without breathing.
This module only has 3 lessons, but they are important.
The hierarchy of oxygen delivery, artificial airways, and airway suctioning lessons will help you plan and implement proper care for your patients and pass the nurses exams you are facing in this class and throughout your studies and career as a nurse.
Module 11 – Health Assessment
No, this module isn’t all about you being assessed in your health classes.
Yes, this module is about you assessing your patients.
What care do they need? What information needs to be given to the doctor?
This module will give you charts and tools necessary as you continue your studies as a nurse in order to successfully implement a complete plan of care for your patients.
In Conclusion
Our Fundamentals of Nursing course will give you additional tools, lectures, and notes on how to pass fundamentals and how to succeed in your future nursing career.
If you haven’t gone there yet, check out our Fundamentals of Nursing course now.
