FIrst of all, my heart goes out to all who may be ill or bereaved. This virus has taken its toll on every single soul on the planet from the business owner to the homeless person to the nursing home resident to the nursing student whose life has been rearranged. I applaud you for your graciousness and your patience. I believe we were created by a Brilliant Creator who has made us Strong, made us to Last. We are Resilient. We WILL rise up better than before. 

Meanwhile, I am here for you at Innovative Teaching Solutions. I am here to come up with creative ideas of ways to help you learn and succeed on every level. 

The Pearson Center has changed the NCLEX a bit through mid-June. The time allotted for both RN and PN candidates is 4 hours total. The minimum number of questions is 60 to a maximum of 130, again for both RN and PN/VN candidates. There are only 60 testing slots allotted per day in larger cities. If your test has been cancelled, don't give in to fear. Just use this time to study and prepare more! I am here if you need motivation or tutoring! There are also many free resources available to you at this time. If your test gets cancelled, go back on Pearson Vue's site right away to get a new test date because test dates are at a high premium right now with thousands of nursing students across the country needing to get licensed. 

So take heart - you will make it through this season. You will rise to the challenges spread out before you. I hope that you have a great support system around you. If you don't, I want you to know that here at Innovative Teaching Solutions, we exist to bring hope and to inspire nurses. I would love to be part of your support system. You are not alone! 

I wish you all success and congratulate you in advance as you pass your NCLEX on your first attempt and begin a very rewarding career of service to others!

Yours for Happier Nurses, 

Dianne

Ever worry about running out of time during the NCLEX? This is generally the least of your worries but once in a blue moon, there are nursing students who run out of time to complete the test. Here are the new rules in regards to running out of time:

When you run out of time before reaching the maximum amount of items, the computer has not been able to decide whether you passed or failed with 95% certainty and has to use an alternate rule.

• If you have not answered the minimum amount of items, you fail.
• If you have at least answered the minimum amount of items, the computer reviews your last 60 test items
• If your last 60 test items were above the passing standard, you pass.
  • If your test items dropped below the passing standard, even once, during your last 60 items, you fail.
• This does not mean you must answer the last 60 items correctly. Each ability estimate is based on all the previous items that you have answered.
  
  So – it is in your best interest to not run out of time! However we have learned that not spending enough time per question can be even more detrimental for your results. Experts recommend taking 1 -2 minutes/question. I recommend taking about 1 min/question. Do the math. RN candidates get 6 hours to complete the NCLEX while LPN/LVN candidates get 5 hours to complete their exam. The minimum number of questions is 85 while the maximum is 205. If you spent 2 min/question, you could potentially run out of time. If you spend 1 min/question, you should never run out of time and should have plenty of time for those extremely difficult questions where you may need to devote 5 minutes.
  
  When candidates rush through their questions, they tend to have no clue what they are reading and can easily make mistakes. I have seen people go from failing to passing simply by dedicating a whole minute of time to each question. Now it’s not just a matter of dedicating a certain amount of time but what you do with that time. In our test taking strategies workshop,, we teach a 5-step process for analyzing each question and advocate spending one whole minute per each question. We have typically seen students go from getting 5 out of 10 questions correct to getting 8 or 9 out of 10 questions correct when they utilize this 5 step process. Start working on your timing and give us a call to help you learn how to break the question down using our 5 -step test taking strategy process. Visit our website at: http://www.ITSNCLEXREVIEW.com or call us at: 405-503-4491.
  And sloooow doooownnn!!!
• Yours for Happier Nurses
  
  ​Dianne
  
  

Tonight I am reminiscing of the good ole days when I couldn’t wait to read the next Cherry Ames volume passed down to me from my grandmother. The dusty old books with their colorful covers smelled of attic and ‘must’. I loved every page and dreamed of one day living the Cherry Ames life. I’m just wondering – how many of you read Cherry Ames?
Well life has changed about 180 degrees since those books were written but the concepts have stayed the same. There’s still no substitute for hand-washing and good bedside manners. An ounze of Compassion is worth a pound of Cure! Now I’m not certain of all the romance that Cherry encountered because most jobs keep you so busy, there just “ain’t no time fo’ dat!”
Travel with me back in time to a quaint setting where student nurses ran the hospitals, where they actually mixed their own drugs and mopped the floors! Oh – and did I mention they LIVED at the hospital?! So when you start complaining about your nursing instructor not letting you out of clinical ‘early’, think back to dear sweet Cherry Ames and her comrads who paved the way for all of us. Put yourself in her shoes and things will take on a different perspective.
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While we are so blessed with modern technology now, let us not forget the human touch – something that will never fade, never change, never become outdated. Strive to be your very Best! Let Compassion outshine your own desire for comfort. And most of all – enjoy what you do and you can’t help but spread that joy to others because it will spill over in everything you do.
Your For Happy Nurses
Dianne

How much are you worth? Well that’s a rather silly question you might say. And I agree. No one can place a ‘worth’ or an amount on any human being. Many will try but we are all so infinitely created, there is no measure of worth or value you can place on us! You should know simply from your study of Human Anatomy & Physiology just how incredibly intricate you are! Each hormone within your body possesses its own set of checks and balances. There are glands such as the thymus in existence just to be certain your body is immune from ravaging diseases. Then take the pineal gland (I know, I know what you’re thinking…’but I thought we didn’t have to know the pineal gland!!’) whose existence helps you sleep well at night. Oh and we haven’t hit the tip of the iceberg yet considering all your major organs that are so intelligently designed, we spend hours of study pouring over our books just to have a smidgen of an understanding of them.So now let me ask the question again. How much are you worth?!
You my Friend are PRICELESS! You are created in the Image of God. You are an Intelligent, Intricately Designed human being with a soul, a mind, an amazing body all wrapped up with feelings and emotions unique to ONLY YOU.


So the next time ANYONE – be it a doctor, a patient, a nursing instructor, your own children, spouse, ANYONE – tries to devalue your worth – just tell them what you’re made of and remember they are made of the same! We are ALL PRICELESS!!!!
Yours for Happier Nurses

Dianne

False Evidence Appears Real
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A couple of years ago I learned a lesson about myself. I am great at helping others overcome their anxiety, their fears. I challenge them to face their fear and tell them that fear is nothing other than False Evidence Appearing Real because I truly believe that. I believe you can conquer fear and that you should in order to move to the next level in your life and live the life you’ve always dreamed of. Well that day I had to eat some of my words. You see fear crept in mightily and got the best of me. Why? Because I let it. I gave into it, totally 100% gave in to it.
First I feel the need to tell you that I have been an avid skier in the past, the kind of skier that dragged her friends down the black moguls (well once anyway) but seriously was a great fast skier of blue slopes, a snob to green slopes. I was the type of ski machine who could glide down a hill with enough grace to not fall down even once in a 3 day ski trip. Yeah that was me! Now that I’ve validated my value/worth as a semi- Olympic skier, I feel I can describe to you what happens to a would be gold medalist when struck by a little thing that is nothing more than false evidence appearing real.
In defense of myself, I had skied all day and I do mean all day after not skiing for at least 9 years or more. I was tired, tired and did I mention I was tired? And cold, cold! After a short rest, I looked at the time only to realize the lifts would be closing in a mere 30 minutes. Now in the past, I would have been saddened by this news and tried to ride it as many times as possible before it closed, perhaps even sneaking in a ride after it closed – oops. But the new and improved Dianne said, well guys I’m going to head down now and I’ll take the “Easy Way Down” – the fictitious name for the longest slope in the world to get you all the way down from the tip top of the mountain. I quickly learned that ‘easy way down’ needed to be redefined. What exactly does ‘easy’ mean? Hard is the new easy. Let’s see if we can kill the skiers is the new easy. Steep and icy is the new easy. I did what any good skier knows not to do – I wedged my skis and snowplowed it down as much as I could because real true skiing made me feel totally out of control. Snow plowing also made me feel totally out of control. Being on skis made me totally out of control. Pretty soon I came to a steep edge, which I might add I had taken faster than my friend earlier in the day. All of a sudden any and all of my tried and true coping mechanisms went out the window or down the slope in front of me. Box breathing? Haha! I could barely breathe at all! Rapid eye movement therapy? What’s that?! Mind over matter? It was as though I’d never heard of it! Change your mindset, change your life! Whaaat?! What I did know is that there was no way in the whole cold white snowy world that I was going to SKI down that hill!! I kicked off my skis, bundled them in my arms like a large awkward child and began the butt bump down the icy steep slope. An angel named Jeremiah appeared. I haven’t read of him in the Bible and until now didn’t realize that angels can snowboard. Jeremiah kindly asked if he could hold my skis, then he took my hand as we butt bumped together down the icy slope. This gave me the fortitude to engage my boots with the skis again and slide on down a few more runs until I came to another steeper icier spot. The lighting was bad. I did mention it was late in the afternoon and I could no longer see the slope even with my goggles. There was nothing to do but to take the skis off again. I made the decision to walk all the way down to the bottom of the mountain and decided to just enjoy the walk. A walk in the snow is beautiful. I am mature enough with my decision to not even feel embarrassed by it. It bothered me not that other skiers were flying past me on the very green ‘Easy Way Down’. I got into stride as though I were hiking, miserable with every step as I carried the heavy skis and poles, helmet and goggles crushing down on my face, jacket warming up to 1000 degrees farenheit, neck gaiter heating up like it was electric. I will tell you this, it is impossible to shed any of these warm winter clothing items while bearing skis and poles, trying to stride upright in heavy cement boots down a 90 degree icy slope. The further I walked, the hotter I became and I don’t mean in my level of cuteness. Alas I made it to the base of the hill. I should have felt defeated and embarrassed but instead I felt I had made the best decision for myself at the time. Fear had taken over. I was terrified, too terrified to move, too terrified to do the ‘s’ turns that I know how to do very well. I learned that when terror and fear grip you to the point of no return, you choose another way to get down the mountain but you still get down the mountain. This Is not to say that I’d throw my normal coping mechanisms out the window because despite my experience today, they really do work and I have seen them work wonders in the past. You see I am an overcomer but I have not completely overcome yet. I am in the process of healing from an abusive marriage and sometimes like today something triggers my fears and that’s ok. I still have to face my fears but I don’t always have to be the champion. I don’t always have to be the strong one. Sometimes just sometimes it’s ok to take off my skis and walk down the mountain. You see when you’re healing, it’s ok to allow the weak spots of your body or soul to take a step down and heal. So whatever you’re dealing with, whatever fears you haven’t conquered yet, don’t beat yourself up over it. If you have to hold your skis and poles and trudge down the mountains while others fly past you, hold your head high and trudge down it the best you can. Enjoy the journey, every minute of it. I never paid more attention to the beauty of the mountain than when I was trudging slowly down it and I was never warmer than when I was trudging slowly down it. So see, giving in to your fears is not all bad all the time. That being said, I pulled myself back up out of it the next day and faced them again. I found a hill to practice on and went out like a champ, making some beautiful ‘s’ turns on my last run of the day triumphantly flying down the bunny slope! Changing your mindset, mind over matter, controlling your breathing, all of these things work magnificently to reduce fear if you have the presence of mind to think to use them, but if you don’t, then you pop off those skis and start walking baby! You’ll get there eventually. After all, it’s not so much about the destination as it is the journey, right? I hope your journeys are filled with wonder, delight, fear and bravery for without fear there is no bravery.
Yours for Happier Nurses,
DIanne



 

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With Gratitude ~ Dianne