Study Nursing Fundamentals: 65 Flashcards on the Profession, Its Hazards and Its Specialties

Open the Nursing Fundamentals deck on Flip It (deck code LS9900, 65 cards) expecting vital signs, hygiene and dosage calculations and you will find none of them. This deck is about the nursing profession: what nurses are legally allowed to do, what the job costs them physically and mentally, which specialties exist, and how the role is organised country by country. Read that way, it is a strong foundation deck for a first-semester professional-issues course.

The six blocks

• The profession (1-14): ANA and ICN definitions of nursing, evidence-based practice, LPN vs RN scope, nurse practitioners and prescribing rights, legal responsibility for drugs administered, assessment, critical thinking, patient education, activities of daily living, practice settings.
• Occupational hazards (15-31): the largest block, 17 cards. Physical, psychological and sexual workplace violence, environmental and organisational and individual risk factors, compassion fatigue, moral distress, burnout rates, low back pain, patient-handling injuries, NIOSH findings, stress interventions, powered exoskeletons.
• History (32-36): the UK title Sister, hospital-based training from the early 1900s, nurses in both World Wars, the 40,000 Brown Nurses of Nazi Germany, nursing as an academic discipline.
• Theory and research (37-40): care plans, nursing theory, research utilisation and its replacement by evidence-based practice in the 1990s, barriers to using research.
• Specialties (41-50): RN first assist, perioperative nursing, telenursing, occupational health nursing, legal nurse consultant, nurse-led clinics, per diem and agency nursing, informatics, health advocacy, research roles.
• Nursing around the world (51-65): the four UK fields, Hong Kong and Australian registered vs enrolled nurses, the four Japanese categories, the three Latin American training levels, male nurse proportions in southern Europe, regulation and education.

A sample of the cards

Three cards to correct before you drill

1. The nursing process is listed backwards. Card 2 gives the five steps as "1) evaluate, 2) implement, 3) plan, 4) diagnose, 5) assess" — the right set in reverse order. The examinable sequence is ADPIE: Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement, Evaluate. Rewrite that back before the card fixes the wrong order in your memory; it is the most tested item here.

2. One card never answers its own question. Card 20 asks for a percentage of nursing students, and the back gives none: "registered nurses including preceptors, mentors and clinical facilitators were the most common perpetrators". Reword the front as "Who bullies nursing students most often?" so the card becomes answerable.

3. Two cards are missing a name or a caveat. Card 59 quotes the "unique function of the nurse" almost word for word from Virginia Henderson without naming her, and card 5 calls La Source in Lausanne "the world's first nursing school" — it is usually described as the first secular one, opened in 1859, a year before the Nightingale School. Add the name and the nuance; essay questions ask for both.

Where to start

Do the hazards block first: it is a quarter of the deck and carries every number you might be asked to quote (80%, 40%, 43.2%, 72%, 30-70%), and numbers decay fastest. Leave the international block for last and drill it by country rather than in card order.

For the clinical half this deck skips, pair it with Nursing Pharmacology Essentials; if you are heading for the licensure exam, see our guide to the NCLEX format and scoring. Log in at flip-it.app and search the library for Nursing Fundamentals (code LS9900).