How to Approach Nursing NCLEX® Questions
- You’ll need to focus on specialties when reviewing nursing NCLEX® questions, including categories like medical surgical nursing and mental health nursing.
- Plan to include all eight National Council of State Boards of Nursing client need categories and the six NCLEX® clinical judgment categories when studying.
- Be sure to review at least 200 to 400 questions per day until exam day.
When preparing to take the NCLEX® Exam, creating a well-rounded and comprehensive preparation program will help you be successful and pass the exam on your first attempt.
Your plan will need to include all eight National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) Client Need Categories:
- Management of Care, which tests your ability to prioritize, delegate, and coordinate care for yourself, your patients, and other healthcare professionals.
- Safety and Infection Control, which tests your ability to follow proper isolation precautions, sterile techniques, and general infection control protocols, such as proper hand hygiene.
- Health Promotion and Maintenance, which tests your ability to properly educate patients on their preventative care and healthy lifestyle choices.
- Psychosocial Integrity, which assesses your ability to assess and address a client’s emotional and psychological needs.
- Basic Care & Comfort, which tests your ability to provide care to your patients in a safe way that promotes their care and ensures their basic needs are met and their ADLs are performed to the best of their ability safely.
- Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies, which test your understanding of medications, their administration, dosages, and side effects.
- Reduction of Risk Potential, which tests your ability to identify and manage potential risks for patients such as medication errors, fall prevention techniques, and safe sex practices; and
- Physiological Adaptation, which tests your ability to understand how the body responds to alterations in their health and the interventions needed to prevent further harm from occurring.
You’ll also need to know the six NCLEX® Clinical Judgment Categories:
- Recognize Cues
- Analyze Cues
- Prioritize Hypotheses
- Generate Solutions
- Take Actions, and
- Evaluate Outcomes.
In addition to the NCSBN categories, you’ll need to focus on specialties when reviewing nursing NCLEX® questions. You will need to be able to answer questions in medical surgical nursing, pediatric nursing, maternal newborn or obstetrics nursing, pharmacology nursing, leadership, prioritization, delegation, and behavioral and mental health nursing.
Preparing for Nursing NCLEX® Questions
During your NCLEX® preparation, use questions like the ones on Slone NCLEX that provide a review that encompasses both the client need categories and clinical judgment.
The NCLEX® is essentially the biggest nursing school final. It puts everything you have learned over the past few years into one exam. This is why being prepared and using a structured preparation program is so important. It is a lot of information for you to recall and recall accurately.
So, when asked what NCLEX® questions you need to focus on, the answer is everything. The NCLEX® is administered via computer using computer adaptive testing. This means that if you answer a question correctly, the next question might be more difficult, and vice versa, which adjusts the difficulty level of the questions based on your performance. As you answer questions, the test calculates your competency relative to the minimum passing competency level. Once the exam determines your competency level, the test will end.
Some tricks to help you remember those nursing NCLEX® questions include:
- Pay attention to key words
- Use the key words within the question stem to identify what the question is asking for.
- For example, if the question is about education, it may be asking you which option indicates a need for further education or follow-up. The key word here is “further.”
- Apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- As a reminder, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is in this order: Physiological (food, water, shelter, and rest); safety (security, stability, and freedom from fear); social and belonging (friendship, intimacy, and acceptance); esteem (respect, recognition, and status; and self-actualization (achieving one’s full potential and creativity).
- When answering questions, prioritize them based on addressing the highest-level of needs first.
- Analyze rationales
- Use your selected answer to see if it makes sense with the question. This is a great help you understand why the right answer is right and why the wrong options are wrong.
- Remember safety is always the priority!
Key Factors in Nursing NCLEX® Questions
The most important thing for you to focus on when preparing to take the NCLEX® is to remember the key factors for every question:
- The NCLEX® tests your ability to be a SAFE nurse who can provide entry-level nursing care and not harm anyone.
- Focus on questions that prioritize patient care based on the “ABCs” of airway, breathing, and circulation.
- Take practice questions that test your ability to recognize critical patient changes that require immediate intervention.
These nursing NCLEX® questions expect that you understand basic concepts such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. You will also be expected to apply your knowledge to complex clinical scenarios, particularly those related to management of care, safety and infection control, and physiological integrity.
Pay close attention to key details in question stems, such as vital signs, lab results, and medications. These are usually indicators of what you need to look for when selecting your answers.
Other important areas to focus on are priority questions that have you identify the most critical patient needs and select the most appropriate interventions. Practice questions that require you to delegate actions and tasks to varying levels of healthcare professionals. Practice clinical scenario questions that apply your nursing knowledge to realistic patient situations.
Finally, make sure you take a lot of medication administration questions, as these tend to hit almost every area of nursing NCLEX® questions and can assess every level of the clinical judgment process.
The Bottom Line
Your plan for NCLEX® should be to take 200-400 questions per day, every day, until your scheduled testing day. Also, do NOT wait to take the NCLEX® exam. You are never more ready to take the NCLEX® than when you have just completed nursing school. Nursing school exams are designed to align with the NCLEX® and force you to critically think so being in the mindset of answering nursing school style questions helps you to be successful!
Begin your NCLEX® preparation journey with Slone NCLEX today.