Nursing School Best Practices for Sustained Focus

By: Blair Mackenzie, EdD, MFA, MBA, BA A&S Professor

Nursing students juggle family, jobs, social obligations, and studying. In September 2024, students added to those obstacles a lack of electricity, internet connections, transportation, clean water, and food. Students from the areas affected by Hurricane Helene have had to drop out of nursing school because of losing everything, even their homes. Those students who remain in school face barriers to success in nursing courses and need all the tools and encouragement available. Best practices for sustained focus in nursing school include (a) understanding what fogs focus, (b) training for improving focus, and (c) exercising the mind to focus.

What Fogs Focus

Any distraction interferes with focus! The weather can be an extreme distraction. Even mildly extreme weather can cause internet outages and prevent students from focusing on learning tied to online textbooks or articles. A text from a family member can be a distraction. Remember that your scheduled playdate for your children causes a distraction. Distractions present an endless enemy of focus and must be managed.

Poor sleeping habits impact one’s ability to focus (Tips to improve concentration, 2024). A lack of sound sleep can negatively affect visual and auditory abilities. Sleep supports alertness and memory. A decrease in these cognitive functions negatively affects focus. A lack of sleep makes it difficult to regulate emotions and causes anxiety and depression.

Anxiety causes decreased focus because of increased heart rate and muscular tension. When one’s brain is preoccupied with anxious thoughts, memory is affected, making learning and retaining new information difficult. Depression drains one’s energy, making it difficult for one to concentrate on complex material. Studying can become overwhelming.

Drugs and alcohol reduce one’s ability to focus. Some medications, such as those used for depression and allergies, can impair one’s concentration. Too much alcohol impairs cognitive abilities. Studying nursing content remains challenging on its own. When you add the information overload students receive from texts, emails, TV, and computers, the information overload becomes a distraction and fogs focus.

Improving Focus

To improve focus, students can take many common-sense steps to care for themselves on their nursing school journey:

Healthy food: more fruits, vegetables, and water
Sleep eight hours a night
Move every 30 minutes or so – try the Pomodoro method of study!
Be obsessive about using a calendar by referring to it daily or more often if needed
Listen to subliminal videos, day or night! We recommend “Minds in Unison” on YouTube
Play focus and concentration games online
Practice mindfulness
Find your best environment for concentration
Minimize distractions, i.e., put your phone on silent, turn off the television
Create a daily to-do list
Schedule a study time
Snack on energy foods like nuts, seeds, and dried fruit

Exercises for Concentration

Read for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, practice to see what you retained from the reading. If your mind wanders, repeating this exercise can train your brain to stay focused and retain information.
Play card games, sudoku, crossword, jigsaw, and chess puzzles.
Listen to music and do exercises to build vocabulary.

Increased focus helps nursing students attain course outcomes, complete exams successfully, and graduate from their nursing programs with the skills to practice nursing at the highest levels of care.

References

Study better with a little focus and planning. (2024). Herzing University. https://www.herzing.edu/blog/study- better-little-focus-and-planning
Tips to improve concentration. (2024). Harvard Health Publishing. Harvard Medical School. https:// www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/tips-toimprove-concentration

Galen College of Nursing helps students develop their study and focus skills to succeed at every step of their nursing education journey. There are many ways to prepare for your nursing education and we have several articles on what to expect and how to succeed throughout our website.

If you want this personalized support in your education, contact our enrollment counselors at 877-223-7040 or attend an admissions event.