NCLEX-RN study guide
NCLEX-RN · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The NCLEX-RN is the licensure examination that nursing regulatory bodies in the United States, Canada and Australia use to determine whether a candidate has the minimum nursing ability required to deliver safe, effective entry-level practice. NCSBN defines an entry-level nurse as a newly licensed nurse with no more than 12 months of nursing experience, and items are developed and reviewed against that benchmark. The NCLEX-RN study guide has 8 sections and about 2,385 words.
01Management of Care
Management of Care questions ask who should do a task, in what order , and with what supervision . The single most tested idea is scope: the RN cannot delegate the nursing process.
314 words, about 2 min02Safety and Infection Control
Two threads: keeping clients physically safe and interrupting the chain of infection. For safety, know fall precautions (bed low, call light in reach, non-skid footwear, hourly rounding, bed/chair alarms), seizure precautions (padded side rails, suction and oxygen at bedside, never force objects into the mouth), restraint rules (last resort, provider order with time limits, frequent circulation and skin checks, never PRN), fire response (RACE - rescue, alarm, contain, extinguish; PASS for the extinguisher), and poisoning or home-safety teaching.
288 words, about 1 min03Health Promotion and Maintenance
Growth, development, and prevention across the lifespan. Know the difference between primary prevention (immunization, seat belts, nutrition teaching, exercise), secondary prevention (screening - mammography, colonoscopy, cervical cytology, blood pressure and lipid checks, newborn metabolic screening), and tertiary prevention (rehabilitation, support groups, chronic disease self-management).
292 words, about 1 min04Psychosocial Integrity
Therapeutic communication, coping, mental status, crisis, and psychiatric emergencies. Communication items reward open-ended leads, reflection, silence, and clarifying feelings ('tell me more about that').
284 words, about 1 min05Basic Care and Comfort
Daily care and symptom management: mobility and positioning, skin integrity, nutrition and hydration, elimination, sleep, hygiene, and pain. Pressure injury staging appears constantly.
308 words, about 2 min06Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies
Safe administration, calculation, monitoring, and rescue. The rights of medication administration (client, drug, dose, route, time, documentation, reason, and the client's right to refuse) anchor every item.
294 words, about 1 min07Physiological Integrity - Reduction of Risk Potential
Predicting complications before they happen. This domain rewards the nurse who acts on the earliest sign and who knows pre- and post-procedure care.
291 words, about 1 min08Physiological Integrity - Physiological Adaptation
Managing a client whose physiology is already failing: shock, fluid and electrolyte imbalance, acid-base disorders, respiratory and cardiac emergencies, neurologic deterioration, endocrine crisis, burns, and sepsis. Prioritization is always ABC plus perfusion and neurologic status.
314 words, about 2 min