u/Muted-Condition1788

This class is the gold standard for all all Upper Division Nursing classes should be taught at UTA. Let’s get into everything this class does correctly.

Firstly, the exams are so well written. This exam uses NGN style questions. There are Select All That Apply, Free Response, Matching, Case Study questions in addition to Multiple Choice… I mean it is modeled like an ATI exam. This is exactly what we pay tuition for. Exam questions that will help us pass the NCLEX, meaning we need to be comfortable with SATA. I am also someone who prefers SATA over Multiple Choice because in this class it is always “Select the 2/3/4 that apply” meaning you can look for patterns/group answers together and answer it that way. There is also partial credit with these questions. These exams also have 60 questions like in Med-Surg and all nursing school exams should have more questions.

Second, the lecture slides are so well made. They are very aesthetically pleasing. They do have a few typos for those of us with Type A personalities, but the typos don’t take away from the content. Our eyes process information with colors in a certain way and everyone learns more effectively when something is nice to look at. The pre-recorded lecture videos are also really good. Professors Peterson and Rountree divided up the voiceovers. They both split Exam 1 content, Peterson voices all Exam 2 content and Rountree voices all Exam 3 content.
The pre-recorded videos are so good that nobody needs to go to live lecture to do well in the class, but Peterson lets you drop your lowest ATI Reading quiz grade if you attend and sign in for all 4 live lectures. I would say you do actually have to listen to the lecture to get the content and know what’s a nice to know vs. a need to know, but I have always been an auditory learner.

This class does not require you to spend days making your memory aid. You do not have to write in super small handwriting. There are some things that are just annoying to memorize, and those you can write down. But you really do not have to.

The most important two steps you have to take in order to do well on the exams is 1) go to Professor Peterson’s videos on Student Success 2) attend or watch Professor Peterson’s Kahoot Exam Review… but if a lot of people answer her Kahoot question correctly then she won’t give as long of a rationale. I recommend trying to ask her to explain as many questions as you can. It’s all juicy exam preparation.

As for clinical: I voiced in my Complex Needs Review that I would not choose to attend UTA if I had known about the restrictive scope at UTA clinicals. Cohorts in previous years were able to pass medications in OB but something happened and our scope got more restrictive. You’ll be able to assess the mothers and the babies. Labor & Delivery and Mother-Baby are your guaranteed units. You may get Antepartum and NICU, you may not. You still have the possibility of requesting NICU for Pedi clinical if you do not get to see it during OB. (If you have Pedi first then obviously you won’t know that you don’t get to go to NICU during OB until the future happens, so request NICU during Pedi if you’re afraid.)

Overall, I think this class was so well taught that I would even say I believe Peterson and Rountree should teach other professors how to create lecture slides, write exam questions, and conduct exam reviews. I really only have bad things to say about the clinical scope, and the fact that we don’t have live lectures for all lecture material due to not having live lecture on exam days (which is the same issue in Pedi).

Exam averages were 88, 82, 86. 12% of the class will make a Level 3.
My personal exam averages were 98.3, 95.8, 96.6. I made a Level 2 on the ATI and this was my worst ATI yet, but I also celebrated my birthday the day before. My friend and mentor who got a Level 3 just did LevelUpRN and dynamic quizzes.

A lot of people have questions about the Basic Life Support (BLS) requirement for the University of Texas at Arlington nursing program, so as Public Relations Officer of the Arlington Nursing Students Association (ANSA), I wanted to explain the different course options available to students.

UTA nursing students currently have two BLS options through ANSA:

• Instructor-Led AHA BLS Course
• AHA HeartCode BLS + In-Person Skills Check

The instructor-led course is generally recommended for first-time BLS learners or students without prior healthcare experience. Since many nursing students enter the program without previously working in healthcare, this course helps build a stronger foundation in BLS skills. It is taught in person by instructors, allowing students to receive live feedback, guided practice, and instruction adapted to different learning needs.

This option is also significantly cheaper. The total cost is $55, which includes:

• Instructional time
• Skills practice
• Skills verification/checkoff
• Written exam
• AHA BLS eCard upon passing

The second option, HeartCode BLS + Skills Check, is a hybrid course. Students complete the online learning portion at home on their own schedule, then register for an in-person skills validation through the ANSA Square website.

This option is mainly designed for convenience and flexibility. However, it is more expensive:

• $37 for AHA HeartCode
• $60 for the in-person skills check
• Total: $97

So overall, you are paying more for convenience. ANSA is able to offer the instructor-led course at a lower cost because the instructors, equipment, and course materials are organized together as part of a larger in-person course structure. The HeartCode option also includes pricing set directly by the American Heart Association for the online learning module, which ANSA does not control.

One nice thing is that if you later become UTA nursing faculty or an ANSA board officer, ANSA BLS instructors will typically perform your skills validation for free, meaning you would only need to pay for the AHA HeartCode portion.

Personally, as someone who has been BLS certified since 2019, I think the instructor-led course is the better value financially and educationally, especially for students who are newer to healthcare.

UTA and ANSA also try to schedule BLS courses around orientation dates for convenience. For example:

• Fall 2026 Campus-Based students may attend the July 27th orientation and complete the instructor-led BLS course on July 28th.
• Fall 2026 Accelerated Online students may complete the instructor-led BLS course on July 27th and attend orientation on July 28th.
• Skills checkoffs for students who completed AHA HeartCode are often offered across multiple days (July 27, 28, and 29) to provide flexibility.

There have also been concerns in the past about timing and compliance deadlines, since the due date for BLS Provider Certification is earlier than orientation. Students have previously been allowed to temporarily upload proof of BLS registration/payment into EXXAT while waiting to receive their final AHA eCard. Once the eCard is emailed, students then upload the final certification into EXXAT for verification by the clinical compliance team.

ANSA has not heard of students having issues with this process, and ANSA has worked with Holly Woods, the BSN Program Coordinator, across multiple semesters regarding BLS coordination and compliance processes.

If you have questions, you can contact:

• The ANSA BLS Coordinator (currently Chris Ling): cwl3341@mavs.uta.edu
• General ANSA email: ansa@uta.edu

Hopefully this helps clarify the differences between the two options for incoming students.

This course is at least three times the work of Adults (Med-Surg). I will detail all of the problems with this course. In order to do well, you have to be the type of student who is able to learn a lot of material in a short amount of time. You have to be someone who is not only above average, but one of the highest performers. The averages on all of the Complex Needs exams other than the final are Cs. All other nursing courses have B exam averages. That is why I say being above average is not enough.

The worst aspect of this class is that there are no good lecture videos. Some of the ones that were redo-recorded by Professor Ramirez are decent, but most are older pre-recorded videos by Dr. Reid (the older professor) and they are awful. Dr. Reid gave Professor Ramiez intellectual property of her old material and Professor Ramirez has not changed the learning material but has changed the content areas tested on.

Why Reid’s pre-recorded videos are bad: They delve way too deeply into Pathophysiology of certain diseases/disorders and concepts that are cool but not high yield / tested on. Nursing exams after J1 are based on nursing considerations and interventions. This means having a good idea of clinical manifestations and nursing/medical management more than anything else.

This is why people historically raved about Hughes Clues and many people even exclusively used Hughes Clues. Hughes Clues condenses the material and cuts out a lot of stuff from Reid’s lecture material. The problem is, Hughes Clues is based on Reid’s exams, not Ramirez. Hughes also retired after Fall 2025, so you cannot ask her questions if you’re confused on something in her videos.

This is why Dr. Hamdan’s Weekly Review Sessions are the new wave. He reviews Comex Needs exams with students. He has seen all of the exam questions from the previous semester. He doesn’t get to see Professor Ramirez’s current semester exam before the students take it, but he bases his teaching on the previous semester’s exams. This is a safer way to narrow down what will be tested on compared to using Hughes Clues videos that are 5-7 years old.

But pointing out some of the big setbacks: his slides are objectively less aesthetically pleasing and his accent/microphone is harder to understand than Professor Hughes. His are live TEAMS meetings that are recorded. Hers are pre-recorded, polished videos. Hughes Clues videos are more digestible for that reason but they do not address Ramirez’s exam content. That being said, Hamdan cuts straight to the facts. It’s dry, but it’s straightforward. Hughes will bring up a patient scenario and then ask you a question and then give you lecture material and that style is a bit too scattered for me.

That being said, unless you just do not have time because you can’t digest it fast enough, you still have to read through the lecture slides/lecture notes to get a complete understanding. You just don’t have to commit all the information to memory. These two resources contain the exact same information in different formatting. You only have to go through one of them. But there is material that is on the exam that is not covered in either Hamdan’s Sessions or Hughes Clues. Your bridge of the gap will be those lecture slides/notes. If you really just do not have time, the Escape Room will cover most of the gaps and definitely tell you what to focus on. Never skip the escape rooms. If you cannot find it on Canvas then please ask someone. It is diabolical that people skipped using a resource where a few questions are actually repeated word-for-word on the exam.

Okay so let’s talk clinical: they hand out Performance Improvement Plans with Penalties like they are CANDY! In Med-Surg, many students would just complete 3-5 medication sheets to submit on Canvas but then pass 10-20+ medications in clinical. That is not what the CONHI policy states, but most clinical instructors are not that strict and most Med-Surg preceptors know that the medication sheet policy at UTA is the biggest waste of time and will not wait for you to spend 20 minutes per sheet to pass a single medication.

I know people in Complex Needs who chance it anyway, but I personally wouldn’t if I were you. J2s/S1s already lost the privilege to insert indwelling catheters and give medications by central line (PICC, CVC, tunneled catheter, port). S1s also lost the privilege to pass meds in OB/Pedi. We only get these privileges taken from us when a previous cohort messes it up for us. Please do not chance it.

Pass the MINIMUM number of medications in clinical. Do your 3-5 medication sheets, make sure they are approved by your clinical instructor before you administer.

Just wait until you’re a nurse resident to learn nursing skills because you will not learn them at UTA unless you go in open lab, except you basically need to purchase your own supplies to use the open lab. Alaris tubing is $20 per tubing if you want to practice priming a line. I would have not attended UTA if I had known how restrictive our scope was compared to Baylor and Texas Woman’s and TCU.

Furthermore, many people will not get all ICU and ER units for Complex Needs clinical. In fact, many people will get a lot of Med/Surg and Stepdown. This is the consequence of accepting well over 200 students in Campus Based and 50 students in Accelerated Online, DFW home region.

Also, a lot of people fail and remediate the IV Push skills validation. There is one rubric, but every clinical instructor has their own personal preferences. Please try to pass with your own clinical instructor who teaches you how they want the IV push validation done. If you do not, you will retake the skills validation with a different clinical instructor with different preferences and will likely fail a second time.

You get unlimited tries, but every time that you don’t pass it, you won’t be able to pass medications in clinical that week. Yes, even though it’s a CVC IV push validation and we don’t even give medications by CVC in clinical. The way it can become a clinical failure is if you continue to not be able to meet the clinical competency requirements throughout the remaining clinicals because you could not pass the validation early enough. Most people pass by their third, and I met a faculty member who is so sick of the long remediation lines that she is proposing that students will have a clinical failure (and need to drop the course or accept the fail) if they cannot pass in 3 tries.

I have a lot to say about this course, but just know that for those interested in ICU/ER (and I know a lot of you are, because nobody seems to want Med-Surg since it is very task oriented due to the less acute conditions/higher patient ratios rather than the ADPIE nursing process you get with the higher acuity pathophysiology in ICU/ER or OB/Pedi for that matter)…

Try to not lose your interest because of this class. I know UTA graduates who made a B in this class and are ICU/ER nurse residents right now. The class is really, really hard. It’s okay to not make an A.

That being said, I kind of respect how brutal this class is because Med-Surg jobs are a dime a dozen, while I’ve really only seen students get ICU/ER nurse residency if they have their foot in the door (through a very powerful reference, PCT, externship, internship, etc.) Although the A is uncommon in Complex Needs, a critical care nurse residency offer is even less common. I tell myself that’s why this course has to be difficult.

I have a lot of opinions on S1 and the only positive ones are related to OB. Let me know if you want my review/opinion on that course. Use the section time that you are in OB to study more for Complex because you won’t have as much time while you are in Pedi.

I took OB first and Pedi second. (You will not get to choose.) I am writing this because I was shocked that Pedi was noticeably more difficult compared to OB which you could study for 2-3 days before the exam.

When I was accepted into the program I followed some guides from 2 users:

https://www.reddit.com/r/utarlington/s/xtjo8ipdXS

https://www.reddit.com/r/utarlington/s/4DXZQmGyzM

So these two guides are outdated because in this era of UTA Nursing, there were no Memory Aids outside of Complex Needs. Now there is no reason to give students an index card that could be handwritten on for attending 2/3 lectures in Pedi for Exam 2 (they did this because Cardiac was on that exam).

If you look at these guides, you can see that exam averages were once 88-91, even without MAs. They are now 80, 86, 86 for Exams 1, 2, 3 and on Exam 1 and 3, the highest grade was only a 96. Even after 2 questions had points returned on Exams 1 and 3.

It becomes necessary to write down all of the Developmental Milestones, Erickson/Piaget stages, and Health Alterations (Clinical Manifestations + Interventions) in very small handwriting in order to fit everything necessary on the Memory Aid for the exam.

The questions are really that specific. And especially on Exam 1 and 3, there are a lot of Nursing Considerations / Nursing Interventions questions asked in a prioritization style.

Student Success slides created by Professor Peterson (updated by Professor Nickols) once covered 85-90% of exam material but they absolutely do not anymore. Those slides were created based on old exams and Professor Martin completely redid her questions. They match Exam 2 somewhat well but there is little info on the Exam 1 and 3 SS slides that would help for the exam.

I would also have to say that if you want every last point possible, there are ~3 questions on Exam 1, ~2 questions in Exam 2 and 3 where you had to open the textbook in order to confidently know the answer, though educated guesses were possible. About 1-2 questions from each exam, had answers that were heavily hinted at during live lecture and aren’t in the pre-recorded videos. Exam 3 had ~3 questions that referenced material from exams 1 and 2.

Pedi does have the most specific blueprint of any class which is essentially a topic list. Not every health alteration in the lecture slides is on the blueprint (which means not on the exam). Every health alteration on the blueprint will be on the exam.

As for the ATI, approximately 12% of students will make a Level 3 but the rest will be half/half split between a Level 1 and Level 2, other than the small minority of those who make a Below Level 1.

As for Pedi clinicals: if you like kids you will enjoy being around them during this clinical. But outside of the assessment and basic cares, you will be mostly hands-off. Even if you do a Pedi capstone at Cook Children’s in S2, you actually still will not be allowed to pass medications.

This course was easier than Complex Needs, but it was noticeably harder than OB which was just too much for S1. Historically, students used to say that Pedi was easier than OB, but no more.

Pedi is manageable but many previously 4.0 students made their first Bs in S1 and many of those Bs were in Complex as usual but surprisingly many Bs were in Pedi as well…

My last bit of tea would be that my clinical instructor told me only 5 UTA students got into the Cook Children’s nurse residency most recently.

** My credentials: My exam scores were 90, 96, 96 and I made a 79.3 on ATI (Level 3 cutoff: 78.3).

I didn’t use memory aids until S1 since that’s when I started working as a PCT on night shift. And then it’s the only time with 3 specialty clinical courses.

It just manages test anxiety being able to check an answer or even look it up when I literally cannot remember (a few things in OB, and a heavy amount in Pedi and critical care)

I honestly feel dependent at this point. Writing as small as possible and honestly kind of forgetting everything when it’s over.

The other top programs like Baylor and TWU and TCU are able to not use them and their students are obviously doing fine.

Is it basically just a compensation for ineffective teaching for us? Especially, and I mean especially in Pedi and critical care. Not truly essential for other classes even if they make those classes easier.

Maybe I’m also worried I’ll be a nurse who basically learned nothing in nursing school? But they say the only thing nursing school teaches is time management, stress management, and some leadership in student orgs…