Nursing school 'must haves'

Lottie is one of our creators, currently studying as a student nurse. In this blog she shares her 'must have' essentials for nursing school!

Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel!

Today's video is gonna be a video in collaboration with Nurses.co.uk and it's gonna be a top nursing school must haves.

Some of these are for theory days and some of them for when you’re in practice on placement.

Subscribe down below, subscribe to Nurses.co.uk, subscribe down below and check out their YouTube channel.

Comfy shoes are a must!

The first thing I would say is an absolute nursing school must is comfy shoes, for the pure fact that when you on placement your feet are going to absolutely kill all day, every day.

Especially when you first go on placement and you're not used to it, so comfy shoes really help. I went back from my Shoezone shoes.

No offence to Shoeszone but I went from Shoezone shoes to my old Clark shoes.

The difference was real, even though my Clark shoes are destroyed!

Get a good backpack

The second thing that I have on is a good backpack.

Again that's for mainly placement but again also for theory.

Plus the amount of books that you have to bring with you every single day and most mentors they like you to bring in the books all the time because they want to ping it on you and say ‘okay look at this book’ and you're like, well it's at home!

So I now bring them every day. I got a good folder and everything you know stuff like that, which brings me on to my next tip which is...

Invest in good stationery!

Bring good stationery, and that's for placement and lectures.

If you're on placement then obviously you don't really need good stationery as such but you do need some good pens to go in your pocket, a little watch and everything.

But in your lectures, you’re definitely gonna need to be making a lot of notes and pencils and pens and coloured pens. They all make your notes a lot more readable.

So yeah, good stationary! And for placement; scissors, a watch, a fob watch and probably just like a badge clip for your card.

Just just buy cheap pens because literally you can't find them on the wards or anywhere else, and no one's gonna lend you their pen; they're all like ‘no sorry, I've got one pen’ or they’ll just lie because, let’s be real I'm not gonna lend a pen to someone if they’re not gonna give it back!

A planner will help you stay organised!

Fourth tip is a planner.

This will help you get really organised for the whole year.

For placements, to write down your shifts; when you have theory; to write down your exams and your lectures and assignments and all that good stuff. A planner is just so so so helpful.

For more guidance on staying organised with your exams and assignments, read this blog on my exam and assignment tips.

Get a nice, hardcover notebook

And to go the planner number five is to get a good notebook.

I personally will never go back to having a soft notebook cover because honestly the amount of times that one planner and my notebook have got creased and the pages have started to like crinkle and stuff because it's just bended in my bag, it's way worth investing into a nice hardcover planner.

I do also recommend getting a large one.

I think maybe no smaller than A4, nah!

Where I get mine from probably will be like Wilko; they do really good hardcover planners and they don't do them for that expensive or overpriced either.

Write in coloured pens for clarity

Another one is more of a tip because I mentioned it in one last point and that is to get coloured pens because, basically if you write your notes in lectures in colour pens it makes it so much easier to cut the notes see know which ones are important so you can see which bit you should need to revise the most.

I like to put a little red star next to something that I don't understand or I want to research and come back to and stuff so colour pens can help you organise your notes great, I like to write in different colours.

Sticky notes help to separate modules and topics!

Another thing, this isn’t really an essential but it's really gonna help you out and that is to buy sticky notes for lectures, obviously to separate maybe the modules or highlight where an exam launches or an assignment launch.

On placement, with all the books you get given on placement it's hard to find the most important pages.

Obviously you get given it for the whole year so just to highlight which areas for your actual placement and then obviously have it just hanging out the edge, it's a lot easier for you to find and a lot easier if your mentor to find as well.

Some of the pages require signatures and it's super important to get those signatures to save you traveling back to that placement at the end of the year before you hand over all your books.

Buy a reliable anatomy and physiology book

So last tip is to buy a good anatomy and physiology book.

I bought one of these from eBay and it was literally like £5 and that was for the exams that we just had in December I think or actually maybe was in first year, I’m not sure!

But I bought a book and it's super good and it's just like one of those generic one I can't remember the name of it but I don’t really think it matters.

You just got like a nice simple one mine was from eBay and it's actually secondhand, so it doesn’t really matter if it is, a book is a book! Every year we have an anatomy and physiology exam.

That's all the tips I have for now! I'll see you in my next video, let me know what you think about this video and if you've got any other ideas for what you'd like to see in this student nurse series or just generally on my channel!

You can find out more about nursing school in my student nursing Q&A!

I'll see you in my next video, bye!

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