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When you inevitably encounter your first delegation questions, your instinct is going to be to recall some scope-of-practice table from your med-surg or nursing fundamentals textbook. Memorizing that table is a fantastic way to get these questions wrong on your first med-surg exam 😉. I say that with love. Here is the problem: the exam is not asking what is on the chart. It is asking whether you can look at a patient, look at a task, and make a judgment call. A table cannot t

Hydrochlorothiazide | Chlorthalidone | Indapamide Thiazide diuretics are first-line for hypertension. Translation: if a patient gets diagnosed with HTN, this is usually where we start. They are inexpensive, widely available, and we have decades of evidence showing they reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Because of this, these are important drugs, and you will likely be tested on them. Let's sta

There is a specific moment in nursing school when the floor shifts under you...

Hi there! Let's talk about Digoxin today. Digoxin is a cardiac glycoside used primarily in the management of heart failure and certain dysrhythmias, particularly atrial fibrillation. Unlike many other cardiovascular drugs, digoxin does not primarily lower blood pressure. Instead, it improves how effectively the heart pumps (we have a fancy word for this = positive inotrope). The Big Picture In heart failure, the heart’s ability to pump blood forward is impaired. This leads to

Loop diuretics are some of the most powerful drugs you'll deal with in nursing school, and they show up on exams constantly. The good news is that once you understand where they work in the kidney, everything else (the effects, the dangers, the test answers) falls into place. The main players here are furosemide, bumetanide, torsemide, and ethacrynic acid. Furosemide (Lasix) is the one you'll see most. Let's start with the big picture We reach for loop diuretics when we need

Pulmonary embolism is one of those topics that feels scary on an exam, but it gets a lot simpler once you understand the story behind it. So let's walk through it together, so you'll know exactly what test questions are really asking. Let's start with the big idea A pulmonary embolism (PE) happens when a blood clot travels to the lungs and blocks blood flow in the pulmonary arteries. What you need to keep in mind is that most of these clots do not start in the lungs. They usu

If you've ever spent three hours with your textbook and walked away feeling like you learned nothing, you're not alone. Nursing school throws an overwhelming amount of information at you, and most of us were never taught how to study it. Therefore, we end up simply studying harder, longer, and later into the night, with the hope that it will stick. My teaching philosophy is founded on my belief that how you study matters more than how long you study. A focused hour using the