When life happens, nursing school can take a turn from being already busy to crazy busy…fast. And if you are one of those students who are juggling family, work obligations and other important commitments with school, then you really don’t have a moment to waste on being unproductive or unorganized. Regardless of what you are accomplishing alongside nursing school you can still establish effective study habits at the start of the new school year so you know how to best prepare yourself when difficult courses come up.
I have created a list of 9 study habits for nursing students that you can incorporate into your daily schedule to set you up now for nursing school success.
Why It’s Important to Form Good Study Habits
Nursing school is straight up demanding due to the nature of the rigorous curriculum itself. Lets face it, nurses are expected to know and master a robust array of medical skills and knowledge, in addition to critical thinking abilities, teamwork and leadership. Which are all a requirement for delivering high-quality patient care. So the nursing school curriculum itself naturally needs to align with this profession and its expectations. And it starts with good study and work habits straight from the get go. This allows the student to master time management along with challenging courses and concepts such as anatomy, pharmacology, and pathophysiology.
Effective time management along with the ability to handle stress is a nursing skill that is essential to master early on. Being organized lends to overall reduction in stress and anxiety which promotes a healthier mindset and mental state allowing one to focus better in situations when it really counts.
Also, nursing is a profession built on lifelong learning. In order to renew and maintain your nursing license yearly, you are expected to stay updated on the latest best practices in medical advancements via professional development courses. If you’ve trained yourself to study effectively in the beginning, these ongoing education improvements throughout your nursing career will be breeze. Not to mention, good study habits contribute to a more competent and confident mindset which is critical to ensuring high quality patient care.
From Personal Experience
When I was studying pathophysiology early on in my nursing program, the Picmonic pathway Understanding Pathophysiology was instrumental to my success in this class. Not only was this pathway created based on the exact same book I was already studying, it was presented in a way that I could incorporate the weekly teachings right alongside all the Picmonics…score! I made it a point to watch videos and take quizzes every single day throughout those courses. These habits coupled with note taking were what got me through this intense material. Let’s just say I did very well in that class…95% to be exact! While the rest of my classmates were complaining about how hard this class was, I was happily sailing through it and enjoying every minute of it. One because I LOVE pathophysiology, and two because it was SO fun to learn with the Picmonics. Now years later when most of my classmates have forgotten this material, I still know it well because the content and characters are so memorable!
1. Create a Study Schedule
You know the old saying “failing to plan is planning to fail”? It’s so true! Make a list the night before on what tasks and assignments you want to complete the next day. Organize your time around this and make the intention to get them done. Taking 5 or 10 minutes of focused intention the night before a busy school day will do wonders for your peace of mind and set you up for the day ahead so you can be as effective as possible.
2. Be Active in Your Learning
It can be tedious at times when we are tasked to read pages and pages from a textbook, and even more we are expected to memorize it to be tested on later! But if we can learn to engage with material in a way that is meaningful and applicable to practice, then we are so much further ahead. It’s been said that if you want to understand something, teach it to someone else. When we are explaining something to another person, we are using so much more of our mental facilities. After all, we are demonstrating and fully engaged in the material which builds more brain synapse and pathways to learning.
Set up a study group with your classmates and take turns teaching the material to each other. This helps for fresh perspectives and collaboration on the material. Nursing is teamwork! Even when you are a licensed nurse, you will still collaborate and consult with other nurses for second opinions. So start this practice now! Discuss the content afterwards to ensure you fully understand the material. Consider Einstein’s quote…”If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. In other words, aim to be able to explain it simply in order to best understand it yourself. This is an excellent skill to learn later down the road when you are asked about a medication or procedure from a patient and need to explain it to them. It happens!
3. Take Organized Notes
This may seem like an obvious one, but nurses do copious amounts of charting. Your perspectives, notes and recommendations need to be clear and concise so that your colleagues can understand what you have assessed in your patient. So best to learn now how to organize your thoughts, and words in a way that you can easily understand and refer back to. Headings, highlights and summarizing content into your own words helps to understand and organize your thoughts and relay knowledge of the material.
4. Make Use of a Variety of Study Resources
Unless you are a read/writer learner, see How to Maximize Your Learning Style in Nursing School for more on this, then you are just fine with reading and digesting printed material. You may learn best with material and instructions that are written and presented in a textbook or other written modalities. However, we all learn differently and our brains like variety and will best retain information that is presented to us in different formats and media. So make it a point to combine your learning with written text, videos and other online resources to further reinforce your learning.
5. Apply and Practice Critical Thinking
Take the content you are learning and apply it to your practice. For example, let’s say you are learning about Chronic kidney disease and need to know the critical points to be aware of and assess for. How would your patient present with this disease? What would their lifestyle be like and what are the concerns regarding their medications and diet restrictions if any? Try to paint a picture on what you would be looking for and think about how you would interact and care for this patient.
6. Review, Review, Review
If you are one of those students who like to cram 3 months of material into the week leading up to a final, I encourage you to reconsider your habits. The brain is not good at retaining and processing material in such a way. And even if you were successful on the exam, chances are you would forget it all in one week anyway. The aim of the game, especially in nursing school is to be able to retain and recall what you are learning and apply it to your practice later on down the road when you really need it. So regular reviewing and application of knowledge to clinical studies and case scenarios is a wise practice.
Quiz yourself often on the content. Set aside a half hour or hour daily to review and process the material to build those connections to your learning. This will also help to identify any weak areas where you need to brush up on the content. Remember my success with pathophysiology? Well a large part of this was due to the Picmonics daily quiz feature! Once I had watched a video and taken the post quiz, this Picmonic was now automatically set up in my quiz queue to be reviewed at my leisure. So I would just open this feature whenever I had a few minutes and review the content I had learned that day or week. For example, standing in line at the grocery store, or waiting for the pot to boil on the stove. We can find the time if we are motivated enough.
There are even stats and experience points to keep you motivated! So you can see how you rate alongside other Picmonic users.
7. Keep Your Study Space Tidy and Organized.
These may seem obvious, but I encourage you to make your study space somewhere you actually want to sit down and work at! If your study space consists of a cluttered desk piled high with tax receipts, bills, kids toys and is parked right next to a kitty litter that hasn’t been changed in a while…you are setting yourself up to fail. Make sure your space is clutter free and clean. If possible, have it near a window or keep a plant nearby to give it an outdoor vibe. There are always things you can do to make it nicer!
8. Take Regular Breaks!
Your brain is designed to work most efficiently when it has time to rest and digest the content you have learned. Set a timer for 30 or 45 mins and when it goes off, remove yourself from the area and get up and walk around. Go outside if you can for a few minutes and just stretch and get some water. Avoid sugary, processed food that will lead to a crash later on.
9. Eat a Well Balanced Diet.
Get some exercise (daily if you can), drink lots of water and get adequate sleep. Give yourself the best shot at success! These habits may seem hard at first, but like any habit they become easier the more you do them and see the results.
Common Mistakes Nursing Students Make
Now it might be all well and good to intend these good study habits, but not so easy to implement. Life gets in the way and kind of takes over sometimes.
- Poor time management
- Lack of a structured schedule
- Personal commitments
- Clinical rotations
- Other distractions, phones, Netflix, etc
Don’t fall into this! Your schooling is important. Think of forming good study habits now as an important step toward nursing career success. Nurses often have several patients to care for and have to manage their time effectively. They simply cannot allow distractions to get in the way of important clinical care. Such as it is with nursing school.
You and your success are important and need to be treated that way. Ensure you have created a space that is conducive to studying, is quiet, calm and you will not be disturbed. Place a “do not disturb sign” outside your door if you have to. Put your phone on silent, or even better in a drawer and out of view/reach to avoid temptation.
Our devices can be a massive time suck and make it harder for us to get back on track when we are constantly checking on recent posts or the latest on swimming suits for dogs. Yes…that’s a thing. Don’t worry, Instagram will still be there when you are done for the day. Try to ensure you are studying effectively! Just because you sat and read your textbook for two hours does not mean you know and understand the content. If you are going to take the time to sit and study, make sure you are spending that time wisely and are not required to repeat the study session because you were not fully engaged on the material the first time around. Engage your brain and make it work.
Ensure you are taking the advice from your instructors on what to study. Consult with your peers and reach out to your teachers if you are not sure about something. They are not mind readers and can’t help you if you don’t ask. Lastly, check in with your mental health and stress levels. Your brain learns best when it is calm and at ease. It cannot retain content when it is overwhelmed and stressed out. Teaching yourself how to handle a heavy school workload now will set you up for success later on in your nursing career.
Using Picmonic for Nursing as a Resource
Not only were Picmonics essential for me in nursing school, I still use them today when I need to refresh myself on important information while at work. Just the other day I pulled up the Picmonic on atypical antipsychotics while working in inpatient psychiatry to refresh my knowledge on these important medications. It took me about 2 minutes to review before starting my shift and was not only fun to do but prepared me for work ahead. And I still like to dig into my quizzes as often as possible to keep my knowledge up to date on all the other Picmonics I have learned throughout the years.
If you are ready to put some of these study tips and tricks into practice and save time studying and boost your test scores, then check out Picmonic plans for nursing students. Here you will learn nursing with 1,200+ essential nursing school concepts in 2-3 minute mnemonic videos and have fun while you do it!
About the Author
Pamela Schutz, RPN, Medical-Nursing Scholar
As a registered psychiatric nurse with over 23 years of experience, in addition to coordinating events, managing social media platforms, and crafting compelling content, Pamela effectively conveys messages and drives participation. Pamela has the talent for simplifying complex ideas and making the captivating world of medicine less mysterious.
