ABOUT LWL
Lauren Blackmore BScN RN
Freelance Nurse Educator
Just like the original Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale, I am passionate about nursing and health education.
When I began this journey eight years ago, I had no idea it would take me here - to a place where I use my creativity and knowledge base to help others become awesome nurses. Back then, I was fresh out of a divorce I’d never thought would happen and was simply looking for a way to pay the bills that was meaningful but that required little schooling (ha! - the joke is on me, right?). Little did I know I would fall in love with clinical nursing and nursing education, and go on to earn a BScN and begin a Master's degree.
Now, eight years later, I find myself a graduate of Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario and an experienced nurse educator.
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Clinical Nursing Experience
I began working as an RPN in 2016 on the Clinical Resource Team (a.k.a. “The Float Pool") at Trillium Hospital in Mississauga. (Side note: I would recommend every new grad work in a float pool for a while before choosing a specialty!) I gained experience on a number of different units, including Cardiology & Cardiovascular Surgery, Neurosurgery, Med-Surge, and Nephrology, and had a good understanding of each of those specialties before finding my home in the ER.
Most of my clinical experience is in the Emergency Room, where I get to perform focused health assessments and implement medical directives (like ordering bloodwork or other diagnostic tests) on my own. I've also done placements at Humber River, Toronto General (ER), and SickKids (both pretty prestigious placements).
Academic Experience
During nursing school, I watched many of my friends struggle to keep up with required readings while balancing clinical practice, labs, and often part-time jobs and family life. Because I worked extra hard and seemed to grasp most of the concepts easily, I found myself summarizing what I’d learned to help friends keep up.
Before long, other students were asking for copies of my homemade mind maps and/or my study notes, and offering to pay me to go over the content with them before an exam. That’s when I discovered my love for summarizing and teaching nursing concepts! I love finding ways to explain things so that others can understand.
I eventually focused my time on tutoring nursing concepts and then worked as a part-time professor of pathophysiology at a local nursing collaborative (college & university) program. Part of my job was to work with other professors to help design and implement entire pathophysiology/pharmacology courses, including the development of NCLEX-style exam questions.
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SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?
It means I am not only very familiar with nursing school curriculum and course content, but I know how to break things down for you, how to help you identify what's important for an exam, how to give you tricks for memorizing things (i.e. cranial nerves and medication side effects), and ultimately how to help you with answering those pesky nursing exam questions where every answer is the right answer and no matter how hard you study, you still walk out of the room feeling like you might have failed.
Using a strategy that focuses on understanding concepts as opposed to rote memorization, I was able to graduate with honors from Sheridan (RPN), Centennial (Bridging), and Ryerson University (BsCN) (GPA 4.22), and passed my NCLEX in 60 questions (shortened during the pandemic) and less than 40 minutes on the first try. But more importantly, I was able to help others excel, graduate, and pass their NCLEX as well.
You're not imagining things - this program is tough. Those who do well and graduate don’t do it because they are super-intelligent or nursing-school-geniuses; they do the work and find ways to make the content make sense for them. For many students, that means interacting with the content in a way that goes beyond reading and lectures. When I was in school, I spent countless hours breaking things down so I could understand the concepts well enough to teach them to others (because this is how I learn best). And now that I'm done school, I don't want to stop teaching! And I don’t want to stop creating content that helps nursing students succeed.
This is where you benefit! As you work hard to complete your degree (and in nursing in general), please feel free to use these tutorials to augment what you are learning in the classroom and in clinical practice.
And please keep in touch while you do! I love to hear from you, whether it’s to tell me how how my tutorials have helped you or to tell me what else I can do to help you succeed. I will continue to add content as I work my way through the usual nursing textbooks, building mind maps and study notes as I go, but if there’s a subject you’d really like to see covered sooner rather than later, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re in this together!
Our mission at Lulu with the Lamp is simple. We aim to provide high-quality educational services that will augment typical course content and help nursing students succeed and thrive!
For more information or general inquiries, feel free to get in touch today.