How I Studied for NP Boards
I found studying for NP boards to be much more overwhelming than the NCLEX. I felt like all of undergrad was spent prepping you for a test and that actual nursing took a backseat to that. Grad school was the opposite. It’s whole focus was on patient care and passing boards never took the limelight. My school recommended test prep sources but never had us follow one as we went in school.
I took the AANP. I graduated first week of December and tested last week of February. Ideally, I would have tested sooner, but Covid slowed everything down. The 3 months dragged on and I got more and more anxious. I truly think that with the right materials, you could test within the month!
STUDY MATERIALS
My last semester, I bought the Fitzgerald book and did the chapter that coincided with the body system we were studying that week. I found it to be quite overwhelming, almost to the point of discouraging. Questions seemed overly specific and wayyyyy too in depth. I spent time spinning my wheels trying to master specific points of topics that really don’t matter. Following graduation, I did the online test prep, which were recordings form a live session. Due to Covid, live sessions were not offered, which was my original plan. Again, I felt as though these recordings were very highly specific and almost overwhelming. I might have felt differently about it in person, but I would not recommend the online recordings.
The Leiks book is a great place to start. It’s available on Amazon, breaks down body systems by chapters and has 700 practice questions in the back. The practice questions overall weren’t quite as hard as the actual test questions, but they were formatted similarly and showed me what my weak areas were. If I could do it again, I would have bought this book for my last semester and reviewed the body systems in conjunction with the ones covered in school.
While Fitzgerald and Leiks both had practice questions, I preferred Leiks because it gave explanations of the answer to each question.
By FAR, the most helpful resource was the Sarah Michelle Crash course. My friend told me about this the day before my test. I did it around 5 hours and felt as if she covered the categories I saw on the test the best. Its concise, doesn’t waste time on stuff you don’t need, and provided a great study guide. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!! She has other study guides and I wish I had found out about her sooner.
TIPS
The biggest shock to me was the lack of hallmark symptoms. I expected there to be hallmark symptoms for every disease, since that’s drilled into our brains, Make sure you don’t rely on this to be able to make a diagnosis- know the other symptoms too!
If you choose AANP, take all 3 practice tests they offer on the AANP website. Some questions were on my actual exam!
There is no way around not knowing antibiotics. I did NOT spend enough time studying this. Know the ins and outs of what drug classes are for which afflictions and which ones can’t be used with allergies.
Additionally, I’ll link some youtube vides that really helped me with some tough subjects, like murmurs, viral exanthems and anemias!
Viral Exanthems - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=choYrT_rt0U
Anemias - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIe1XKicIc0
Murmurs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxhGmBZ5W18&t=556s