Tips & Tricks for The Next Generation NCLEX in 2024

I was a part of some of the first group of students to take the Next Generation NCLEX in 2024 and thought it might be helpful to share what worked for me to pass the exam on my first attempt. This exam naturally brings a lot of stress and anxiety to nursing students because it’s the thing we spent the past two to four years training to take to make sure we’re competent enough to practice medicine. Here are a few things I hope you might find helpful in preparing for the exam.

The Purpose of The NCLEX Exam

Like I mentioned before, the NCLEX is a national competency exam taken after completion of an accredited nursing program. The goal of the exam is to establish if the student has learned enough to make a safe decision when put into a situation. However, there’re also a variety of content questions as well like pharmacology, nursing skills, calculations, etcetera that are more straightforward. Both styles of questions test to see if you know the learning concept and can apply it.

Because this is ultimately a safety exam, logically, you shouldn’t get a question incorrect by choosing the safest answer, easier said than done though. I appreciated one of Mark Klimek’s sayings that stuck with me from one of his lectures, something along the lines of, “The NCLEX won’t ask you an in-depth question about the side effects of Beta Blockers, but rather what they’re and why you shouldn’t give them”. This clicked for me because, rather than being a perfectionist by trying to retain the obscurist detail, all I needed to know was the major chunks of information and focus on keeping my patient safe. Let’s get into the things I found helpful in preparing for the exam: some being, a study schedule, questions banks, and content review. 

Study Schedule 

After graduating I took the week off to enjoy time with my friends and family to celebrate and decompress from a long school year. In that time, I also researched on the recipe for success in passing the exam and tried to take the major points from the vast amounts of information, and fit them into my lifestyle. For myself I had to start with a study schedule. 

Creating a study schedule was crucial for me because I knew if I didn’t have some sort of structure my personality would simply study too much one day from anxiety, then put off the next day, and would ultimately lead to a lack of consistency. I treated studying like a 9-5 job with sometimes getting off work a little early. Remember we’re running a marathon not a sprint. My typical day was to get up at 8am, make some breakfast and enjoy a slow morning and then dive into the section of material I was studying for the day, Pharm, Medsurg, OB, etcetera. 

Let’s say I was working on Med Surg. I would spend the first few hours of the morning reviewing material and then take a break for lunch, take 40-80 practice questions, and study what I missed from those questions in the afternoon. I would repeat this throughout the week making sure I continued to reinforce the concepts I had learned earlier in the week that way I would build up to a confident level. Also, it’s important to focus on the area’s you’re weaker in. I wouldn’t spend too much time in Pharmacology because a lot of it was memorization and I was decent at it, but I would do a lot of Pharmacology questions because it’s important to practice applying the principles. 

Question Banks & Self Assessments 

I would argue that this is probably the most important part of studying because not all questions banks are equal, and you can often learn a lot more from getting a question incorrect and reading the rationale. Ideally, you want a large question bank that is more difficult than the actual NCLEX that also gives quality rationales and percentage breakdowns of right and wrong answers. Also, a question bank that is computer adaptive, the NCLEX will give you harder and harder questions the more you get right in a category, and vice versa for incorrect answers, and you’ll want a question bank with the same feature.

  My favorite question bank was UWorld, it was a great resource that met the criteria and is renowned for nursing and medical students to help them prepare for exams. Choose one question bank provider to do your primary studying, other vendors have small inconsistencies in questions and rationales that can throw off your learning. When I was going through UWorld, they began adding video content beta testing to review topics as well, a really nice feature. Some other resources my classmates used were Archer and ATI and they found great success. For me they didn’t click as well, but pick a good reviewed brand with a track record.

  Sometimes you may ask, do I need to buy a question bank? Most likely not, my school provided ATI (which was purchased in my freshman year fees, a bad example I know) which I believe is a commonly used resource in most schools. Most programs should offer a resource or point you in the right direction for some. One quick remark about the number of questions to take per day, many healthcare professionals in the media space say anywhere from about 50 – 100 questions per day, but for myself there would be days I could only get through 40 or less. Quality over quantity is important here, and learning how to answer questions correctly is better than cranking out hundreds of questions. 

Final thoughts on question banks, take each question seriously as if you’re taking the actual NCLEX and start with a low number to build test taking stamina. Read each part slowly and a few times to discern what the question is actually asking you. Often I would get a practice question incorrect because I believed the question was asking me something unrelated. Sometimes educated guesses happen, in this case I would choose the safest choice that answered the question the best, and in a good number of cases that answer would be correct even if I didn’t know the answer based on content alone. There are plenty of resources on how to answer NCLEX questions, please look into them, there is a science to it and it often is a lifesaver when you’re unfamiliar with content. 

Hopefully your question bank comes with self assessments. I took two before taking the actual NCLEX and I treated them like rehearsal testing days. I chose to take NCLEX early in the morning, so I would wake up like I usually would, and then drive myself to my school library and sit down to take a self assessment. Once I was finished I would close my laptop and take the afternoon off and look at my missed questions in the evening. I believed this helped me because I was taking an exam in an unfamiliar environment and had to sit for the duration of the exam. UWorld was also really great because each self assessment gave me a percentage likelihood of passing the NCLEX. I scored both self assessments in the 90’s percentile which gave me a very high probability of passing on my first attempt, and the program will also tell you if you should postpone your exam for additional study time. 

Content Review

Your question bank should offer in-depth rationales for all questions answers, the most important rationales to study will be the questions you got incorrect and questions you guessed on but still got correct. Now here is the logic, it’s important to know why you got the question wrong, but it’s more important to know the concept of why you got it wrong and then make a flashcard. For example, let’s return to our Beta Blockers, if we know what their mechanism of action is to lower heart rate and blood pressure, what should we check before administering the medication? Heart rate and blood pressure, if these two things are low we would want to hold the medication. We don’t want to lower what is already low because our patient still needs to perfuse oxygen to the tissues, for a simplistic answer. So this was a safety question, but also the concept of circulation and perfusion question. For those working in medicine, we know how important perfusion is, cough cough ABC’s. If you’re unsure where to start studying, take a practice exam to see your weak areas and start with those topics. 

For other content resources, a lot of people (including myself) like the Mark Klimek lectures and NCLEX-style questions. They’re great starting points if you’re unsure where to begin when reviewing content and major concepts we learned in school. I liked to follow along with their Youtube practice questions, and would listen to their lectures while working outside of my study schedule. I also used my iPhone recorder to say my notes out loud like a podcast, and take those with me if I was on a run or working as well for passive learning. 

My favorite resource is Simplenursing.com with Nurse Mike. I really like his platform and the easy to digest and understand content videos. I had a membership through nursing school and I have to say, they were my saving grace for a lot of my exams. However, just like choosing one question bank, choose one or two content review resources, and if your school content was enough I would stick with that.

For math dosage questions I really like registerednursern.com she is fantastic in the nursing education space and often takes concepts one step further which is needed in the clinical setting. She is great about ciphering what you need to know in math questions and what is just filler used to throw you off. Overall you cannot go wrong with her content. 

Conclusion 

Overall there are many ways to study for the NCLEX and each person does it a little differently. The main thing is to keep a consistent study schedule with good resources and you will be setting yourself up for success. The most important part is doing practice questions to learn how to answer NCLEX-style questions.

  I know this is a daunting time for nursing students so keep a positive mindset and take breaks after you have done your daily studying. When the end of the day comes, do something fun, go hangout with family or friends because that is just as important to be rested and be ready to go when the time comes.

 

Good luck! 

-Taran Tavares