Best NCLEX Review Book

Best NCLEX Review Book

National Council Licensure Examination or NCLEX is a test conducted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing to determine whether you are ready to start practicing as an entry-level nurse. The scope of this exam is wide-ranging and you must be extremely prepared to crack it in your first chance. To be able to practice nursing in the medical center, you must pass this exam.

After completing your nursing program, the best thing for you will be investing in the best NCLEX review book to clear your NCLEX-RN exam. There are many books for NCLEX available in the market which promise to prepare a nurse to crack this exam. But to pass the NCLEX on your first go, it is very important to invest in the right NCLEX review book.

Things a proper NCLEX review book must have:

You can use any NCLEX review book to prepare for the exam. But in order to crack it in your first go, you will need a proper review book. An NCLEX review book is considered good and suitable only if it has the following things:

• The book should be able to help in the revision process. See if it contains enough exercises to resolve your issues and help you with your doubts.
• It must be able to provide information in an easy, convenient, clear, well-organized, and intuitive manner.
• It must have practice exam questions.
• It should have explanatory notes on the correct answers so that the students can know why an answer is correct.
• It must have online study materials.

 

Types of NCLEX-RN review book:

Generally, there are three types of NCLEX-RN review books. They are as follows:

The Content Review Book: If you need to focus on revising all the concepts of nursing that you have learned over the years then you must buy a content review book for NCLEX. This type of book will help you to revise all the important things and contains several practice Test questions to check your preparation.

The strategy review book: This type of NCLEX review books focuses on tips, suggestions, and test-taking strategies. If you already have a grasp on all the nursing concepts required to take this exam, then this type of book is the right choice for you. These books allow you to eliminate options and answer the test questions correctly.

The Q&A Review book: As the name suggests, these books focus on answering the exam practice questions. It is a great choice to test your progress in the preparation for the NCLEX.

So, you must choose according to your needs and the time left for the exam. You can buy two or three types of these books for better and full-length preparation.

 

Some of the best NCLEX Review Books:

We know that there are so many NCLEX review books present in the market. This can easily confuse a student on which one to buy. To ease your buying process and save your time, we will discuss some of the best NCLEX review books available in the market. This list will help you to buy a suitable book to crack NCLEX.

Saunders Comprehensive Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination:

It is one of the best NCLEX review books which provide a special test-taking strategy. This book is constantly rated as the most popular review book. The author keeps on adding new study aids which makes it the right pick. The updated information and the practice questions are extremely helpful to prepare for this exam. The contents of this book are presented in an easy-to-understand manner. Some practice questions are easily accessible online. For online study using laptops or PCs, you will get access to an exclusive website that provides one with a lot of study materials. This book offers you certain clues to analyze the right options while you are reviewing. This review book comes with various question formats which include prioritizing, multiple responses, fill in the blanks, as well as audio questions. These help one to practice their skills. At the end of each chapter, there are several questions related to it. This helps the student to quiz themselves before moving on to the next chapter. This allows for thorough learning and perfect preparation without any gaps. Another brilliant feature of this book is that it provides explanations for both right as well as wrong answers. This clarifies all the doubts of a student and gives a clear vision about one particular topic.

Pros:

• The questions in this book are very good.
• It provides both online and offline practice questions along with other study materials.
• It provides explanations of both right and wrong answers which help to clear all doubts of a student.
• It provides brilliant visual information with the help of graphs, tables, and other pictures.
• It has questions after every chapter.
• It provides comprehensive study materials.

Cons:

• The pages are of low-quality. They rip off easily.
• The huge amount of information can suck the interest of a student.
• The kindle version of this review book is not much user-friendly.
• The answers are given on the same page as the questions.

 

Mosby’s Comprehensive Review of Nursing:

It is one of the best NCLEX review books which contain more than 800 pages of information. This book contains information covering all the main topics which are presented in an organized way. This also helps in the revision process. The colorful charts and illustrations in the book help to highlight the essential learning materials. This book comes with two full-length practice exams to check your progress. An entire section of this book is about nursing management practices which include prioritization, governance, and task management. These are some important topics require to crack the NCLEX. Another interesting feature of this book is that it comes with a companion CD.

Pros:

• It contains more than 800 pages of information presented in an organized way.
• It comes with two full-length practice exams.
• It contains an entire section dealing with nursing management practices.
• It comes with a companion CD.

Cons:

• It can put some students off due to its huge volume content.
• Some repetition of information is present.
• The rationales are not very clear.

 

Davis’s Q&A Review for NCLEX-RN:

This book is said to have the highest number of practice questions for NCLEX than other review books in the market. This makes it a very popular option among nursing students. This book has 2750 questions and more than 10000 practice questions. This can be considered enough to prepare for the NCLEX. This book is quite challenging because of its difficulty levels. Many questions of this book are tougher than the actual exam questions, allowing the students to prepare themselves at a higher degree of difficulty. Thus, the students receive an advanced understanding of the nursing concepts which makes it easy to crack the exam. The questions are arranged in a special way to allow the students to identify their weak areas which need improvement. This helps to focus on those particular areas. All these ensure a better chance of success in this exam. The rationales are extremely detailed and informative. Some guidelines are also available to help the students understand various question types and how to handle them.

Pros:

• It consists of a huge database of practice questions.
• It offers harder practice questions which improve the preparation.
• Presence of extremely detailed and super informative rationales and explanations.
• The contents are arranged chapter-wise.
• It comes with two-full length examinations to check your progress.
• It offers one year’s access to more online materials.

Cons:

• Some pages have typographical mistakes.
• The kindle version of this guide is disappointing and challenging to read.

 

Lippincott Q&A Review for the NCLEX Exam:

It is one of the best budget-friendly NCLEX review books. It delivers information in a fast, effective, and easy way. The best thing about this book is that it uses the same type of questions and difficulty level as the actual exam paper, thus helps to prepare the student for the exam both mentally as well as psychologically. This book is for the students who are already familiar with the exam syllabus as this guide mainly focus on questions and answers. This book contains over 6000 high-level questions that promote high-order thinking and active learning. The main ‘focused areas’ of this guide include mental health, medical-surgical, obstetric, and pediatric nursing. To make the study process more convenient, the book contents are separated and intuitively color-coded. If one can answer the questions of this book correctly, then he/she can easily crack the exam.

Pros:

• It comes with more than 6000 study questions.
• The content is separated by sections and color-coded to make studying super easy and convenient.
• It provides some tips to deal with NCLEX type questions.
• It also provides online study materials.

Cons:

• The book doesn’t explain the answers.
• The online study materials are almost the same as the book contents.
• The book has uncorrected typos and errors.

 

Prioritization, Delegation, and Assignment: Practice Exercise for the NCLEX Exam:

This is a great book that must be there in your study aids. This book will help you to become a better nurse. Most of the books discussed here, focus on passing the exam. But Prioritization, Delegation, and Assignment is the best book that prioritizes making you a good nurse and prepares you to deal with the common issues. It highlights the way to approach various situations that nurses face these days and strategies to deal with them. As the name implies, this review book is divided into three parts which are prioritization, delegation, and supervision. This book enhances your critical reasoning, power of problem analysis, and resolution. This feature makes it different from the other books on this list. This book concentrates on the basic practice questions and theories required in this exam. It has several multiple-choice questions. But this guide must be paired with another more typical NCLEX review book for better preparation.

Pros:

• This guide prioritizes real-life situations.
• It focuses on the important components of the exam.
• It prepares you to be a qualified nurse who is ready to face any medical situations.
• The difficulty level of the questions helps to improve critical thinking.
• The explanation for the correct answer is given in detail.

Cons:

• Some answers of this guide are quite subjective.
• This guide needs to be used with another typical NCLEX review book.

 

Exam Cram NCLEX-RN Practice Questions:

This is one of the best budget review books which offers quick study on time. This book covers all the important nursing concepts that are required in the NCLEX and also provides several practice questions to test your progress. Separate rationale pages are present in this book for easy review. This book has about 1250 questions to prepare with. The practice questions are difficult and are designed to test the concepts for an easy recollection. This book is suitable for a late-stage study. It also provides a cram sheet to test your preparation. An exam test engine is provided in a CD to help the student with the exam question formats.

Pros:

• It is highly effective for a late-stage study.
• The format of the contents is easy to understand and suitable for personalized study plans.
• It provides a Cram sheet for last-minute revision.
• It is best for refreshing your memory and sharpening your knowledge.
• It offers easy access to several concepts and references to rationales and explanations.

Cons:

• Some confusion may arise due to the errors present in the book.
• It is not at all comprehensive regarding the nursing concepts.
• It fails to provide you the detailed information.

 

Kaplan’s NCLEX-RN Drug Guide:

This book focuses purely on drugs and medications as they form a huge part of the NCLEX-RN test. This book is best to rectify the gaps in your preparation. It provides huge information on the medications that are necessary for this exam. More than 300 drugs are explained in this book in a flashcard format with their relevant application, contraindications, uses, and various other details. Those drugs are arranged according to their category. This also makes it smaller as compared to other books for NCLEX. So, it is easy to carry and can be easily revised in a bus or train. It features a detailed index with data on drugs and their brand names. It is very useful for correct pronunciation. These names also have their medical abbreviations included which helps to prepare you for the workplace.

Pros:

• It is smaller and portable.
• The information is presented in a flashcard format to allow better revision. This book provides a very fast review of nursing medications.
• The medications are arranged very cleverly to make learning easier and convenient.
• It is the best guide for drugs and medications.
• It is suitable both for nurses as well as nursing students.

Cons:

• Only the use of this review book is not sufficient to pass the exam. Another textbook to cover the rest of the areas is required for a full-length preparation.
• The explanations in this book are not very detailed.

 

 

HESI Comprehensive Review:

It is one of the best NCLEX review books for students who have a long study plan and have started the preparations early. This book is written in simple language and the terms are clear. This makes it quite easy to understand. The contents of the book are arranged into chapters. This book uses different teaching techniques to explain certain concepts like psychiatric, pediatric, and neonatal nursing. This book has clues, short lessons, hint boxes, pictures, and charts to make learning pleasant, enjoyable, and interesting. It comes with an extensive online resource center that provides a wide variety of practice questions to check the preparation progress. It also helps to sharpen their skills.

Pros:

• The book layout is impressive and attractive to make your study interesting and enjoyable.
• The high-quality, durable pages of the book can withstand the rigors and constant shuffles of months-long study periods.
• The rationales are very detailed to enhance your understanding and retention.

Cons:

• Presence of several typos around the text.
• The online resources are not impressive.
• Less than 300 online questions are present.

 

Illustrated Study Guide for the NCLEX-RN:

It is one of the best books for NCLEX-RN. The well-designed charts and mnemonics help in the revision process. The important concepts are presented in colorful boxes to make learning easier. It comes with a comprehensive online resource to provide practice questions and carefully presented rationales to ease the study. This book has access to the Evolve web resource which provides the students with more than 2500 questions. The online portal further covers the key concepts. The latest edition of this book contains the most recent study plans for NCLEX-RN. Some nursing concepts which are tested as part of this exam are also added in this guide.

Pros:

• This book has a lot of clear and color-coded illustrations.
• The latest edition of this book contains the recent additional study plans.
• It has comprehensive online study materials.

Cons:

• The guide is deliberately summarized.
• If you rely only on this book, then a lot of gaps will be created in your preparation.

 

NCLEX-RN Content Review Guide:

This review guide is published by one of the finest brands, Kaplan. This guide provides a summary of allimportant nursing concepts thus acting as a refresher course. It contains more than 600 pages of study materials. This guide uses the super-effective Kaplan learning method. The contents are presented in an ‘easy to understand’ way and this book follows a study path that allows you to cover the entire contents of the NCLEX contents. So, one can learn the entire thing needed for the exam without going through the full course. A ‘Decision Tree’ strategy is used by Kaplan to help the students to enhance their critical reasoning skills. This guide provides several online and offline practice contents that help the student understand the answer choices. This guide also provides reviews from nursing professionals which allows the student to have a better grip over the concepts covered.

Pros:

• It is a comprehensive but concise review guide.
• It comes with several quality online practice questions.
• This guide provides reviews from nursing professionals.
• A ‘Decision Tree’ strategy is used to sharpen the critical reasoning skills of the students.
• The contents are presented reasonably and follow a study path.

Cons:

• It lacks full-length practice exams to check the progress.
• The rationales and explanations of the practice questions are unsatisfactory and meager.

 

Some study tips to achieve success:

As we have already said, NCLEX is not easy to crack. One has to work very hard to excel. But studying and studying without any plan cannot bring you success. There are certain tricks to cover up the whole syllabus thoroughly, quickly, and effectively. We will now share some tips which will help you to crack the NCLEX in your first go. Let’s begin!

• Take short breaks: It is very important to take short breaks from studying. Research has shown that short breaks during studying helps in better learning. Monotonous studying will make you bored and less productive. Don’t think that more studying without any breaks will give you easy success. Taking short breaks help to refresh your minds and you can easily memorize the lessons.
• Give yourself rewards: It is normal psychology that if one is rewarded for something then he/she does it more efficiently the next time. Rewarding yourself will boost your self-esteem, confidence, and will make you more productive. Rewards may include everything you like, for example, chocolates, ice-creams, or a movie-night.
• Fix your study time: Just remember – ‘Time management, scheduling out a study-time, and prioritizing everything can bring you success’. It is important to fix your study time. It will not only help you in punctuality but will allow you to complete your syllabus quickly and effectively.
• Try group studies: Don’t always do solo studies. Yes, I agree, solo studies are good and easy but group studies can be a real gem. Group studies make learning better, easier, and quicker. Moreover, we know that nurses need to work effectively with their co-workers. Group studies will help to develop a peer-understanding and will teach you to function as a team. You can find some fellow students from your class and study together at least once or twice a week. Support and encourage each other and help to improve the weak areas. You can quiz, vent, and discuss about various nursing concepts to have a better grasp on each topic. This also helps to reduce the anxiety and stress.
• Make a study ritual: Creating a study ritual is a wonderful way to achieve success. Most of the students after weeks of preparation, feel tired and exhausted. They are seen dreading even before the start to study. A little re-evaluation in your study environment can help to deal with these issues. Keep a bowl of your favorite snacks in your study table. A little soft music and lighting candles can also be helpful. If you are bored of your study place, try switching and mixing. Read in your garden, or a library. You can also visit some coffee shops for a change of environment.
• Understand your learning style: A student needs to understand his/her own learning style. Some students can learn the best by mere reading, others have to write things down to memorize, and some can even remember lessons just by listening or seeing.There is no right or appropriate learning style. It varies from student to student. You just need to know your learning style and understand what works the best for you. But unfortunately, most of the students don’t even know their learning style. If you are a visual or audio learner then watch more videos and pictures on the necessary topics. If you need to write things to remember them, then you must break your study time into reading and writing phases.
• Avoid Cramming: Last but not the least, I will suggest that it’s better if one avoids cramming. Start your preparation early, make a study plan, learn new topics on different days, do a lot of practice questions, and most importantly revise everything. Cramming never brings the best results. It is very important that you don’t overload or burden yourself or else you will be stressed out. Keep it slow, easy but steady!

 

Conclusion:

As we know, there are hundreds of NCLEX review books are available and to crack this exam you will need a proper book. The list of some of the best NCLEX review books are given to make your choice easy. Understand your requirements and demands and choose accordingly. We have also shared some tips to make your preparation easy, quick and better. We hope that you will like these tips and suggestions and they have been really helpful to you. We would love to hear back from you!