The Next Generation NCLEX is introducing some HUGE changes, and I’m sure most of you are going to love the latest change that’s making news.
In my previous video, I talked about some of the big changes you can expect to see when the Next Generation NCLEX goes live on April 1, 2023.
However, the change I’m talking about in this article and video will make life much easier for nursing students and new grads who plan to take the new Next Generation NCLEX exam format, and it has to do with reference ranges for lab values.
Lab Values for NCLEX
As a nurse, there are many labs and lab values that you’ll encounter. Unfortunately, lab values can have some variation in their reported “normal range,” depending on your facility, textbook, or the laboratory used.
And if that’s not frustrating enough, these lab values can be reported in different measurement units. For example, you might see potassium reported in milliequivalents per liter (mEq/L) or in millimoles per liter (mmol/L).
The frustrating thing for many nursing students is that they spend a lot of time trying to memorize these lab values for NCLEX, only to realize that in the real world of nursing, the normal ranges are almost always listed beside the patient’s actual result, allowing you to instantly see whether the lab value is high, low, or normal.
Here’s a sample printout of labs below, and you can see how the normal range is printed to the right of the patient’s results:
Next Generation NCLEX Plans to Include Reference Ranges for Lab Results
If memorizing lab values is something you’ve been stressing about, I have some good news. The Next Generation NCLEX is really trying to emulate real-world nursing, and they have decided to provide the normal reference ranges for lab values in the actual case studies and knowledge questions.
Therefore, you will no longer have to spend time memorizing the ranges for these lab values like new nurse graduates have in the past (including myself). That alone will take a lot of pressure off of individuals studying for the Next Generation NCLEX, and I think this change makes a lot of sense.
Granted, NCLEX is always making changes, so it’s always possible they could change this again at some point in the distant future, but for now, this is great news!
A Word of Caution about Lab Values and NCLEX
It’s very exciting news for many students and 2023 graduates that they won’t have to commit so many lab value ranges to memory. However, I would caution students and recent grads on a few things concerning labs and lab values…
- First, the Next Generation NCLEX is not going to be released until April 1, 2023, and the changes won’t take place until that new format is released. So if you are taking the NCLEX before April 1, 2023, you might still see exam questions that require knowledge of lab values.
- Some of your professors (or courses) in nursing school may still require you to know those lab values and their normal ranges, and they could still test you on those things. So you might have to learn them anyway.
- Even though you don’t have to memorize the actual reference ranges for lab values for the NGN, there’s still a lot of information you’ll need to know about labs (see below).
Lab Value Information You Need to Know for NCLEX and Nursing
Even if you won’t be required to memorize the normal ranges for labs on the Next Generation NCLEX exam, there are still some important things you’ll want to know about labs – both as a nurse working in the real world, and for NCLEX or nursing school testing purposes.
Here are some things I’d highly recommend learning about labs:
- Learn what the each lab actually means and/or measures
- Learn the causes of high and low results for the various labs
- Identify signs and symptoms you’d expect with abnormal lab levels
- Learn the specific nursing interventions for abnormal labs, as well as the treatments that you can expect to be ordered by the physician
To help you learn that information, you might find the following resources helpful:
Finally, just because you don’t have to memorize lab values for the new NCLEX format, it may still be beneficial to memorize labs that you frequently encounter as a nurse, just so that you’ll know the normal range for your own benefit.
For example, there may be times when you are providing patient education or discussing things with other healthcare professionals, and knowing the lab value ranges for labs you commonly encounter could be very helpful.