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Nurse Practitioner, a show for new NPs and students that want to pass their board exam the first time and make that transition from RN to NP as seamless as possible. I’m your host Sarah Michelle. Now, let’s dive into today’s episode.  \nHello, my beautiful friends. Today we're going to be talking about an often unanticipated part of your upcoming test day experience, mental fatigue. I absolutely promise that this is something that you want to be prepared for way ahead of time, so that way you're not taken by surprise on your big day. Because this is another one of those feedback items I get from students again and again.  \nThese tests are long. Y'all are going to be tired no matter what. But how you deal with that and the tactile tools you use will make all the difference in your exam day success. And we all know, the more prepared you are before your exam, the better off that you will be when the time comes. And so let's all add managing mental fatigue to your exam prep checklist starting today.  \nSo to start off this episode, I want to explain a bit further about what I mean by mental fatigue and why it happens during your exam. For those of you listening that are not up to date on the exam details, and that's okay, at current standpoint, so today AANP is 150 questions and ANCC is 175 questions.  \nAnd for most students out there, I feel like the mental fatigue really starts to creep in on you around question 45 to 50 on your exam. And that is because our traditional school exams are right around this amount of questions. We have trained our brains to be on high alert and ready to work for those first 50 or so questions, but we haven't had a whole ton of experience working our brains past that point.  \nIf you think about it, 175 questions is a lot of questions that is then additionally compounded by a lot of stress and pressure because this is your big certification exam. It's a huge deal, right? So you're likely to walk into your exam already tired if you haven't been managing that anxiety well  \njust from the level of preparation that you've been putting in along the way. And not to mention those night before the exam hard to sleep jitters.  \nAnd so when we reach this pinnacle point of our exams, which will fall at different points for each of you, but question 50 really tends to be that hallmark time. Mental fatigue can take a lot of different shapes and forms, and each of you are going to have your own mental blocks to work through surrounding this topic. But universally, it tends to look a little something like this.  \nSo, you find yourself reading the exam question and all of a sudden you look down the answer choices and you have no idea what you just read or what the question was even asking. It's kind of like your brain glitched for a second and even though you did actively read the question, your brain didn't catch up to comprehend it with you.  \nOr for some students, you answer a question but then when you reread the question stem, you realize that you picked an answer that was irrelevant to the question being asked, even though this was a fact that you truly knew deep down. And so mental fatigue at its core leads to you checking out of your exam, which is obviously the last thing we want. Because if you're only at question 50, the majority of your exam, at least two thirds of it actually, still isn't even complete yet. You've got a long road to go.  \nSo then, of course, our question becomes in this episode, how do we deal with this? So Sarah, what am I going to do, right? The good news is that the first step to managing mental fatigue is being aware that it's happening, just like anxiety, right? Being aware allows us to target it with our tools instead of continuing to stumble through question after question and hurting your chances of actually passing the exam.  \nAnd so think back to a long exam you've taken and try to pic","cbCaigLi3jO9VNCg","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigLi3jO9VNCg","pdf",144520,"English","# Mental fatigue during the exam\n## When mental fatigue starts\n## Common signs and effects\n## How to manage mental fatigue\n## Using mental breaks and focus reset","[{\"question\":\"When does mental fatigue typically start during the board exam?\",\"answer\":\"The transcript notes that many students feel mental fatigue creep in around question 45 to 50.\"},{\"question\":\"What are common signs of mental fatigue while taking the exam?\",\"answer\":\"Common signs include not understanding what you just read, and realizing you chose an answer that doesn’t match the question stem even if you knew the facts earlier.\"},{\"question\":\"What strategy does the host recommend to manage mental fatigue?\",\"answer\":\"Take awareness seriously and use mental breaks—such as looking away and resting eyes every 25 questions (or as needed)—to recharge and regain focus before continuing.\"}]","Becoming a Stress-Free Nurse Practitioner - Episode Transcript - Mental Fatigue | PDF",1790041489,18]