The NCLEX-PN® 2020 Categories and Concepts

00:00 Well, there it is in all its glory, the official NCLEX-PN test plan, that's viable through March 2023. Now, let me break it down a little bit for you. You see that there are client needs. Now, there are 4 main categories in client needs; safe and effective care environment, health promotion and maintenance, psychosocial integrity, and physiological integrity. Also, 2 of these client needs major categories have subcategories. So you see there that safe and effective care environment has 2 subcategories and physiological integrity has 4 subcategories. So those are the basic overarching topic concepts that you'll be tested on. Now, you also notice that each one has a range, a percentage. You see some say 6-12, 18-24. You've got the different ranges in there. That lets you know that you have the possibility in taking your test, the possible range of the percentage of questions on your PN exam that will come from that specific category or subcategory. So, while it may feel that your test is all one topic or they're coming after you in one area, that's really not true. Everyone's test on the NCLEX for the PN reflects this overall framework and will line up with these percentages.

01:28 Now, in addition to these categories and subcategories we just talked about, there are 5 concepts and these are utilized throughout the 4 major client categories and subcategories of the plan. So, the 5 we have are clinical problem solving, that's the nursing process; caring; communication and documentation; teaching and learning; and culture and spirituality. So these concepts will kind of be woven through that following 8 categories that we just talked about. So first one, clinical problem solving and nursing process. That's just a scientific approach to care that means you collect data, you plan, you implement, and you evaluate. So, they're going to check and see that you have a logical, scientific approach to problem solving. Caring. Now I know sometimes this can be an emotionally charged word, but really what they're looking for here is that you as an LPN or an LVN interact with the client in a way of mutual respect and trust. Are you collaborative? Do you provide support and compassion to help patients reach their therapeutic outcomes. That's what caring is. So you really want to focus in on therapeutic communication and what that means to establish that type of relationship. Now we're talking about communication and documentation in the 3rd concept and so communication involves both verbal and non-verbal interactions between you as a nurse and the client as well as other members of the healthcare team. Also events and activities are going to talk about how you should validate them, how you should document them, your use of electronic records, are you following standards of practice. Those are the types of things that will be involved in the documentation of events and activities. The 4th concept is teaching and learning.

03:21 Now, LPNs, our role is for you to facilitate the knowledge that the patient has acquired.

03:27 RNs will do the initial teaching but LPNs play an essential role in helping reinforce that teaching. How do you help this patient acquire skills? How did the right attitudes to help them learn how to change their behavior? So we want everyone to take steps toward being healthier and us as LPNs, you should be really adding to that process by promoting patients and encouraging them to have a change in their behavior towards health. Now, the 5th and final one is culture and spirituality. So, this is how you interact with patients in these 2 specific areas. Now, I want you to think about just the individual patient, it's not just that. I want you to think about the individual patient, a family or group, also significant others and entire population. So, they're going to test and see do you recognize that each client has unique self-identified individual preferences to their care and do you respect those and do you honor those. Because there's also standard of care and legal considerations in this area. Okay, you may think like "whoah again that's a lot of words." Well, we're going to continue to break it down for you and we'll even get to the point where we walk through specific questions for you but the purpose of this video series is to introduce you to the concept of who puts the NCLEX together, who monitors it, and what is it made up of. So, all the test statements in the 2020 NCLEX-PN plan require you as the nurse to apply clinical decision-making and critical thinking to nursing practice. Well, that just means thinking like a nurse. Do you recognize how to work through a problem? How to keep each of the patients in your care safe? Now the test plan also makes the assumption that the nurse integrates concepts from other sciences. Social sciences like your psychology and sociology courses. Your biological sciences like anatomy, physiology, biology, and microbiology. So, they know that you've had this prerequisite courses before you entered your nursing program and they're expecting you to be able to draw from that knowledge as you're making sound clinical judgments.