What I Learned From Teaching 1,000 Future Nurses

Most future nurses are unsure exactly what they need to study, both for the NCLEX and for their own courses. Many prefer to study on their phones. Many lose valuable study time to methods that simply are not evidence-based. And they want AI that actually teaches them, not AI that just hands them the answers. I built NurseSavvy around those four lessons, and this week it passed 1,000 users: nursing students, TEAS and HESI students, and new grads preparing for the NCLEX.

1. They don’t know what to study

As a psych nurse, I have precepted hundreds of students from more than 10 schools over the past year, and I hear the same complaint: “I don’t know what I’m supposed to study.” Sometimes coursework is kept vague on purpose, out of a well-meant worry that a clear target lets students game the exam. In my experience, it does the opposite. Students who know the target spend their time learning instead of guessing. Consequently, NurseSavvy starts with the student’s own course: upload a study guide or the professor’s slides, and it builds a short daily plan for exactly what is being taught that week.

2. They study on their phones

Between clinicals, jobs and families, most of my students study in five-minute windows. Rather than shrinking a textbook onto a screen, we built for the phone first: one question at a time, swipeable learning cards, and sessions you can finish in a hallway.

3. They lose time to methods that don’t work

Rereading and highlighting feel productive, but a major review of 10 study techniques rated both low-utility, and rated practice testing and spaced practice highest [1]. Testing yourself beats restudying for long-term recall [2], and spreading reviews out beats cramming [3]. So every NurseSavvy card brings a fact back at growing intervals, from hours to weeks. Furthermore, our learning cards land at about 80% correct across more than 20,000 answers [4], close to the ~85% “sweet spot” where learning is fastest [5]. What that rule does and does not support.

4. They want AI that teaches

Students are going to use AI either way. The question is whether it does the thinking for them. Our tutor asks guiding questions, makes students explain their reasoning back, and never writes care plans or graded work.

Next, I’m bringing NurseSavvy to nursing programs, so faculty can see who is falling behind, why, and what to do about it. To every student who sent feedback or told a classmate: thank you. If you teach nursing and want to try it with a class, message me.

— David Zimmerman, MSN, RN, founder of NurseSavvy

Sources

1. Dunlosky et al. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
2. Roediger & Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Psychological Science.
3. Cepeda et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin.
4. NurseSavvy learning data (research page).
5. Wilson et al. (2019). The Eighty Five Percent Rule for optimal learning. Nature Communications.