Shannon Olsen

Professor Mann

Transition to Practice 

17 April 2024 

Preparation for Licensure and Transition to Professional Practice 

When taking numerous ATI exams throughout my years of nursing school, I often would look at my individual performance profiles for each of these exams to review my scores. I used these profiles to assess my scores, the questions I got wrong and the questions I got right. ATI does a great job at identifying weaknesses and strengths regarding testing topics, and I would often use this to study for future ATI exams and in preparation for the NCLEX. I would work on topics and review them extensively if I got lower scores for certain nursing concepts. Over time I have definitely improved my test taking outcomes by implementing multiple strategies. When I take long exams that are over 85 questions I often take 1-2 breaks while taking these, to clear my head and reset before going back to answering questions. This seemed to help my test score overtime and really help me keep my energy and focus levels up when taking extensive and long exams. I also use the strikeout tool, highlight tool, and I cover the answers when reading the question. These tools help me not overthink as much about the question, but also help me to read the question more thoroughly. 

I used the focused reviews that ATI provides to reflect on topics I was not performing as well in. Remediation of ATI exams helped me reflect on what I got wrong and why, and I think doing those assignments helped the information stick in my mind more as I did future assessments. I also met with a learning specialist from SASC at one point in the year to review how I answer questions on exams and how to have better test taking skills. Going to the learning specialist from SASC helped improve my test score immensely. 

Overtime, in nursing school I have developed a list of self care strategies that have helped me get through my academics and promote a work/life balance. I often take walks outside after clinicals to reflect on my day and my patients that I had during the shift. I often read and/or journal when I have down time to take my mind off school work and focus on other aspects of my life. I also made sure to make time for my friends and schedule time blocks to hang out with them. I tend to meal prep for the school week in order to make my mornings easier and sleep in more before heading to class. At the beginning of the semester I made SMART goals to better organize my time and create a better balance of life. One of my goals was to create a weekly schedule filled with assignments and school events to better organize and schedule my time. This goal has helped me a lot in my last semester of school and I have done a good job of keeping up with this one. I definitely would have gotten behind on school work if I didn’t do this weekly schedule so I recommend to other nursing students to do a similar system of their own for assignments/events. 

I learned a lot from the course Transition to Practice that I will use in my future practice and professional life. I will always use the advice I got from this course on my resume and how to interview when applying for future jobs. I will also use my ATI practice exams in order to practice for the NCLEX exam I have coming up. I will also always look up and thoroughly read my company’s policies and regulations when starting my nursing career and make sure the companies I work for have regulations that support and protect nurses.