Nursing practice test Remediation: Essential for nursing student success

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Tamara Jessica Washington-Brown

Saint Paul’s School of Nursing, USA

: J Nurs Patient Care

Abstract

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Nursing students will take hundreds of tests throughout their academic career to evaluate their ability to practice safely and effectively as a bedside nurse. However, if such students are to take such tests effectively they must sufficiently practice and prepare. How should nursing students prepare for their nursing exams? They should prepare for an exam as they would for a driving test to receive licensure. How would the driving student do on their driving test if they only read the driver’s manual or the rules of the road and never sat in the driver’s seat? The driving student would have to get in the driver’s seat of the car and practice truly driving to best prepare. It’s more than reading about the experience of driving. It is about doing it! Likewise, nursing students should implement practice exams before taking actual exams. Practice exams should be taken immediately after the student has received lecture and has read the applicable chapters of the textbook. The purpose of a practice exam is to simulate taking an exam and to evaluate and correct knowledge of content and test taking strategies. It goes beyond simply taking a practice exam and looking at the score of such an exam to gauge how well he student will perform on the real exam. The student should review all questions-both correct and incorrect to improve their understanding of the content. My presentation will explore from the expertise of a Nursing Student Success Coach and Retention Specialist how exactly nursing students should remediate practice and actual exam questions in the most effective way to increase exam scores and improve the retaining and application of content through critical thinking and clinical judgment.

Biography

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Tamara Brown currently serves as an Assistant Dean of Nursing and Nursing Student Success Coach/Retention Specialists. As a nursing education researcher for ten years, she has completed research of several nursing student success strategies such as test taking skills, virtual clinical education, and critical thinking. Having been a nurse for over ten years, she begun at the bedside and then entered nursing leadership in professional development as a clinical nurse educator. Afterwards she formally moved into academic nursing education as both a clinical and theory instructor before going into nursing education leadership. Her nursing specialties and certifications include nursing education, medical surgical nursing, geriatric nursing, and critical care nursing. She works as editor for several nursing journals and has a blog in Minority Nurse.