NCLEX Test Plan Looks Confusing

(Updated August 2022)

The NCLEX test plan look confusing. What topics are part of the test plan on the NCLEX? What are you actually being tested on? The test plan includes eight sections you have to pass on the NCLEX exam. I can simplify it so you know what to study!

If you get a good NCLEX review book, you can look up this information in a book. Personally, I use Saunders because it’s more thorough. If Saunders is too overwhelming, you can review content with my NCLEX Nugget Pages book. Don’t rely just on buying practice questions for your review. Seriously, get an old-fashioned book. Here’s a breakdown to make it easier to review content.

1) Management of Care

The topics being tested in this section of the NCLEX are the ethical/legal issues, “who do you see first?” and delegation questions.

Ethical/Legal includes advanced directives, informed consent, HIPPA, advocacy, ,client rights, nurse practice act, policies and procedures manual, organ donation, ethical principles and dilemmas, assault, battery, malpractice, reportable conditions, and interdisciplinary teams.

2) Safety and Infection Control

Safety topics include: fires, electrical and radiation safety, falls, ergonomics, restraints, poisons, incident reports, car seats, seizure precautions, rooming two psych patients together, infant abduction, emergency response plans, disasters, and triaging patients.

Infection control topics include transmission based precautions, infection control practices and personal protective equipment to wear. You can read about what those infection precautions are here.

3) Psychosocial Integrity

The topics being tested in this section of the NCLEX are cultural questions, and how to deal with all the psychological disorders. All this information is covered in the psych chapters of a good NCLEX review book.

4) Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies

This is all about meds, IVs, total parenteral nutrition and giving blood! Do you know the most common meds and what they are for? Here is my top list of meds. Do you know how to give meds by the different routes? This by far is the most frustrating topic because there is a lot to know.

5) Health Promotion and Maintenance

This section includes complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), common milestones, developmental theories. It also includes most of maternity and newborn questions for normal labor and delivery.

6) Basic Care and Comfort, 7) Reduction of Risk Potential and 8) Physiological Adaptation

These sections are not easy to break up to tell you what to study. That is because they include all the diseases and systems of adult health and pediatrics! These are the most time-consuming sections. Because you just don’t know what diseases you’ll get asked about. So, go study the diseases and be able to know the basics of what causes them, the diagnostic tests and labs, interventions and med classifications to give.

Do you need to know it all! Definitely no. However, when you are going through the different sections, test yourself with NCLEX-style questions. If you aren’t getting at least >60%, then you’ll need to work more!