Congratulations, Leti! Please join me and all the other nurses our Hall of Fame.

Best wishes, Susan 

Hi, Rebecca:

I'm using the 3rd ed of Harkrereader, Hoagan & Thobaben's Fundamental of Nursing: Caring and Clinical Judgment and #6 in the procedure list for IM injections includes this:

Inject the medication, ... aspirate for a blood return ... Blood return indicates that the needles has entered a blood vessel... if blood return is noted, remove the needles, discard the syringe, and begin the procedure again. Beginning again prevents the medication from being injected intravenously and prevents reinjection of aspirated blood.

Although I know that the ventrogluteal site is preferred over the dorsogluteal site for IM injections in adults, my resources all agree that while aspiration may not be necessary for immunizations and vaccines, it is still recommended for most other IM injections.

That being said, in this question, it's more important to focus on how the nurse communicates with the student. 

I am always looking for new/updated resources and would be very interested in the name and author of your textbook.

Thanks for writing! 

 Hi, Robin:

I'm so glad you like our website! But I'm distressed that you are not getting answers to questions.

If you want to ask me/the instructor a question, you have a few different options. First, you can write a comment to any one of my blog postings (like you just did). You can also write to me using the link on the Ask The Instructor page (look on the right hand side of the page for the 2 links to ask a question about a question or about the reading). If you want to send me a personal message, you can send something directly to me using the Learning Extension website or you can send the "instructor" an email at: instructor@ncsbn.org

Are you trying to write to someone else? Let me know.

Regards,

Susan

Hi, Jo: I wanted to write and give you some information. Answering NCLEX-style questions takes skill and practice. Most people on this website agree that our questions are very similar to the kinds of questions they see on the NCLEX exam and really help prepare them for the real thing. These are questions where you need to analyze the information and apply your nursing knowledge in order to answer the question - and not just simply recall information.

Here are a few of my favorite tips. See if these help you to answer questions.

• Read the question carefully, looking for key words (such as "first", "priority", "greatest", "best", etc.) and then read each of the responses separately (this is especially important when all answers are correct... ).
• Since the first step of the nursing process is assessment, if the question asks for the initial nursing action, always look to see if there is a releveant assessment answer.
• Focus on the client's safety when there doesn't seem to be an urgent physiologic need.
• When 2 answers are saying the same thing (but using differrent words), then neither one is probably correct; when 2 answers are opposite (such as "high BP" and "low BP"), the correct answer may be one of those two.

As you review test questions, be sure to read the rationales (even if you answer a question correctly). If you read the various discussion boards, most students agree that this is very helpful.

Lastly, new graduates often tend to either overthink things or read too much into a question - because their minds are so full of information! The best thing I can tell you is to keep things simple... read the question and using ONLY the information given to you in the question/scenario, select the response that best answers the question.

You can do this! Let me know if you have any specific questions about content, including practice questions.

Oh, and one last thing... we are starting a new feature this week. We're offering a podcast called "Question Dissection" where I explain how to answer the question of the week. Be sure to check the home page today for the announcement!

Best wishes for a wonderful career in nursing! Please join me and the other nurses in the Hall of Fame!! 

Maybe it would help to chunk the information into categories (by drug classification). Since the actions, uses, side effects, etc. are so similar for each classification, this "big picture" approach may be helpful. You can refer to our Additional Information page, linked in Lesson 6A, C. Pharmacokinetics, on the Drug Metabolism & Effects page (see Remember It box at the bottom of the page).

I would also suggest that you are able to identify some of the more commonly prescribed medications in each of the categories (the generic spelling of the meds will help identify the drug class).