As of April 1st, 2023, the NCLEX has been revised. I have spent almost every day from NCSBN's initiation of research in 2017 to improving the exam to respond to facilities' nursing management that although newly graduated students have the knowledge and can think critically, they fail to use clinical judgement. I have recognized this lack in achieving licensure. With my follow-up of the latest and greatest, I can safely say that NCSBN is giving you a very fair opportunity to show your "stuff". I can tutor you to this exam since you have the knowledge and ability to critically think. And you do have the ability to use clinical judgement in your activities as a healthcare provider, but perhaps your program or contracted organizations did not offer test questions that uncover such judgement. In our initial sessions, we will explore what that means in your future practices.

YOU need to know how to respond to the NGN formatted items (questions) but more importantly, I can help you understand and prepare for the alternative items, the new time limit, how your exam is "scored", and how NCSBN determines whether you have passed or not. No tutor has taken this new revision at the initiation date. It will be a year or more for new RNs to take that on. THANK YOU for reading this UPDATE. Ann Schide, MSN, RN, MS

I am very happy to be here as my passion is teaching and coaching. I found my passion after building a free-standing women's hospital. After 4.5 years of hearing, " It will get better (the capital [$$$] line)", an opportunity arrived in teaching in an Associate Degree RN program. I knew from the interview that I had found my home. Any faculty office with its door open showed my filing system. Vertical and plentiful! I retired after 17 years. My husband and I had plans for retirement. Picture this, as I often do. Driving around this beautiful country of ours in an RV. He explores while I sit on my lounger with my laptop, coaching, tutoring, and filling information gaps.. This is how much I love teaching. And the "high" I get is not so much from teaching, but helping students succeed in their quests. The RN program was missing a champion for this outcome. My office door was closed for two reasons, student coaching or I was not inside. Peers urged me to at least bring my door to a crack. They admitted that I was embarrassing them with my access and still returning student work quickly. But that is who I am. If something is important to my students, it is a priority for me as well. Weird, I know, but it is not the first time anyone has found me to be beyond the realm of normal. I can find humor in most situations. I would urge the serious faces from my fundamental student nurses as soon as I could. Humor is the best medicine. All the TV programming involving health care had them convinced they had to show dead seriousness on their faces and approaches. Scary.

My coaching in test anxiety and taking brought grades up 5 to 10 percent points on our school tests, to which each professor contributed their original test questions. That may not seem much, but for struggling students, it allowed them to progress to the next level. Fantabulous! My school was noted for our high first pass rates in the licensure exam (NCLEX-RN) of 95% and higher, never in the history of the school had we achieved 100%! My retiring class of 127 student nurses did it! (BTW Eventually EVERY RN school or program attains a 100% pass rate as unsuccessful students retake the exam and pass, BUT that is not THE 1st pass rate. Plus, because we used a team teaching model, I cannot take all the credit, but those alumni I run into during my volunteer gigs say otherwise. Students and success in achieving their goals fill my heart. Alumni have become RN practitioners, high-ranking hospital administrators, AND physicians.

You may be thinking, "But I'm not going to be good as a nurse." Do you suffer test anxiety? Have you had people in your life tell you that you couldn't do something, bringing you self-doubt and the lowering your self-esteem? Join the club. There are many other students, including myself, with those same dilemmas! Please let me work with you to open your truly remarkable gifts, because you do have them unless you were forced into the art and science of nursing as I was. Also, I have high level APA skills (6th ed) provided by my two Masters' degrees and five doctoral-level writings (I figured out that a Doctorate was not what I wanted or needed for my future service to students and persons with the gift of ADHD.) But I have tutored students in writing essays in APA format. With AI here and growing, you would think a tutor assisting you in paper wring was superfluous. I have yet to read an AI generated paper or review show the emotion that the writer can include.

Okay, now a bit about me. I graduated from Vanderbilt University after receiving a U. S. Navy Nurse Corps Candidate Scholarship for my final two years. Talk about the impossible blended with low self-esteem. The Navy began accepting 250 recipients. The Vietnam Conflict was winding down, so the government dropped that number to 120. In the summer before my junior year, only 80 student nurses from around the country would receive this honor. I was positive I was out. But no. I won (I saw it as a game show after awhile)! This was my first insight that I may have more within me than I was led to believe. Here is a thought to take on that came from my first-generation Welsh immigrant grandfather with no formal education. "You ARE no better than everyone else, but no one else is better than YOU!"

This Rhode Island native went to school in Tennessee and then was sent to California for active duty. My final assignment was the neurosurgery wing. Being a social animal, neurosurgical patients were not my forte. So I applied and gained entry into the Navy's Operating School in Four Palms, CA with a return to my original base as an OR RN. I married the man I met at Vandy three years after meeting. He was an aviator stationed in Maine. When transfer time arrived, I tried to relocate to the East coast. The current Nurse Corps Admiral said no to every married nurse, so I took my leave from activity duty and began living with my husband a year after we were married. We now mark 49 years of wedded "bliss" (ok, any married folks reading this know that isn't always true). We served in Newport, RI, Pensacola, FL (daughter #1), Rota, Spain (daughter #2), and then back to Pensacola, FL. From there I was recruited to build that women's hospital in Chattanooga, TN. I made a full circle, almost.

We love animals, especially rescues. Our GrandKitty, Oatmeal, is 19-years-old and in renal failure, while (our 16 lb. dog) is 10. What do I do in my spare time? My daughters will attest to the fact that to see me without a crochet hook or knitting needle in my hands is seeing me in overwhelm. I love any hobby that is hands-on. Currently, I am learning quilling, embossing, and card making. For my internal self as well as to help others, I am a trained Reiki Therapist learning to become a Reiki Master. The other alternative health skill I possess is Tapping, or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). Although trained in the allopathic (traditional western medicine) approach to healthcare at Vanderbilt, my father's death from melanoma and the associated pain from "treatments" of chemotherapy and radiation made me question what I could do with my hands besides hand out medications. These two paths, along with others, I have found to be most helpful in my ministrations to my patients.

Finally, I have a huge investment in coaching people, especially those with ADHD, or neurodivergents as we are referred to currently (2025), to bring them to their desired level of success. Between a test-taking strategy I developed called, "Playing the Game", and the above mentioned meetings with students, mostly non-traditional adult students who had families with complex issues, I have much success in guiding them to their heart-driven goals. Or more specifically, my students have the success. Not much more in this stage of my life could make me prouder. Please allow me help you find your success!

Ann