IFSI Cheat Sheets — Health Student
Studying in Nursing School: 150 Mnemonic Tricks
It’s 11 p.m., the night before your pharmacology midterm. You’re re-reading the same page for the fourth time, highlighter in hand… and ten minutes later, everything has already evaporated. Come exam day, staring at your paper, drug classes get jumbled, the order of the cranial nerves gets tangled, and the formula for dosage calculation remains fuzzy.
In healthcare, everything must be known, and everything looks alike. The problem is almost never the work put in: it’s the way the memory tries to grasp it.
What the book contains
150 mnemonic tricks divided into 10 fields across 160 pages. One concept, one image, one way to recall it on the day of the exam or in front of a patient. Paperback, printed on demand in Europe.
Concepts that get confused
Anatomy and physiology are overflowing with lists that look alike: the order of cranial nerves, the carpal bones, the layers of the skin. In pharmacology, it is the drug classes, their indications, and their side effects that get tangled. Add to that the constants, the standard values, the endless acronyms, and dosage calculations that must be set up correctly the first time.
These are exactly the kinds of content that are best suited for mnemonic devices: precise, arbitrary lists with no internal logic—therefore impossible to deduce, only to memorize.
The 10 fields covered
The 150 tricks are presented as colorful cards, on 160 full-color A4 pages. They cover ten fields, including: anatomy and physiology, pharmacology and dosage calculations, emergencies and vitals, hygiene and nursing care, as well as ethics, law, and nutrition.
Every acronym is spelled out in full—because in healthcare, half the memory work consists of knowing what the abbreviation means in the first place. The entire content was verified before publication.
Not just for nursing students
The book is aimed at nursing students, but also at PASS (health studies track) students and those in nursing assistant training. The lists to memorize are the same: constants and vital signs, anatomical vocabulary, therapeutic classes, hygiene rules, and standard precautions.
It is also a companion that stays with you throughout the training, from the first semester until the state diploma: you don’t learn the cranial nerves just once; you re-learn them every time you think you’ve forgotten them.
Reviewing between internships
The pace of a nursing training institute leaves no room for comfortable time slots. Between teaching units, tutorials, end-of-semester exams, and internship periods, revision is squeezed into the gaps: the commute, a break, the fifteen minutes before sleeping.
The card format was designed for this: you pull one, you recite it, you close it. Unlike a textbook, there is no thread to pick up from the beginning—each trick stands on its own.
Three years, six semesters, one state diploma
Nursing training takes place over three years and six semesters in nursing training institutes. This curriculum leads to the State Diploma in Nursing, which comes with a Bachelor's degree and 180 European ECTS credits. The training framework alternates between theoretical instruction—lectures, tutorials, personal work—and clinical training in the field.
It is this alternation that makes memorization so difficult. You go from one teaching unit to another, you leave for an internship, you come back, and you have to recall a concept seen four months earlier at a moment’s notice.
Entering nursing school today
A useful clarification, because the information is still circulating: there has been no entrance exam for nursing schools since 2019. Admission to the training is done via Parcoursup for high school graduates, and through a dedicated track for candidates returning to studies or justifying professional experience. The selection tests of the past have disappeared; the application file has replaced the nursing entrance exam.
Therefore, this book has nothing to do with exam preparation. It comes into play after entering the training, during the three years of nursing studies.
What a nursing student must remember
The volume is considerable, and above all, it cannot be deduced. Anatomy and physiology require precise lists. Pharmacology requires knowing therapeutic classes, their indications, and their effects. Dosage calculations do not forgive approximation. Added to this are constants, standard values, hygiene rules, and a medical vocabulary where every acronym must be known.
Nursing students know it: whether you are in your first year or your last semester, whether you are on an internship in a hospital center, in psychiatry, in the operating room, or in a medico-social establishment, these are the same fundamentals that must be kept in mind.
After graduation
Once a State-registered nurse, you work in a healthcare facility, in private practice, or you pursue a specialization: operating room nurse, nurse anesthetist, childcare nurse. Some move into management as health executives, others into advanced practice.
The fundamentals learned during training, however, do not change. A book of memorization tricks is not just for passing exams: it remains useful the day when, on duty, you need to recall a specific value, right away.
Also for nursing assistants and health studies students
Nursing assistant students and childcare auxiliary students, or rather every childcare auxiliary in training, face the same memorization requirements, within a different scope: constants, hygiene, precautions, care vocabulary. PASS students, meanwhile, face anatomy and physiology in an even denser form.
The book was designed for these three audiences of future healthcare professionals, because the difficulty they share is the same: a volume of knowledge that far exceeds what a simple re-reading can lock in.
What this book does not do
Let’s be clear, because in healthcare precision is not negotiable: this book is a memorization tool, nothing else. It does not replace your courses, your reference manuals, or the protocols in force in your establishment. It contains no treatment recommendations and is not a substitute for any official source.
During internships as on the job, your supervisors, your protocols, and the current recommendations are the authorities. A mnemonic trick helps you recall information you have learned; it never replaces it.
The pace of nursing school
In a nursing training institute, revision time is counted in stolen minutes, not entire evenings. Between lectures, tutorials, end-of-semester exams, and internships, you have to revise while commuting, during a break, or the night before.
The format was designed for this: you open, you pick a trick, you close it. No need to go through a whole chapter for the session to be worthwhile.
What this book is not
It is neither a course, a reference manual, nor a collection of past exam papers. It does not replace your training materials or your teachers: it helps you retain what you have already studied. It contains no treatment recommendations: for practice, your protocols and your supervisors are the authorities.
For whom
Nursing students, from the first to the third year. Those who are preparing for their midterms, reviewing before an internship, or brushing up on forgotten basics. And more broadly, anyone in health studies facing the same problem: a volume of knowledge that exceeds what a re-reading can hold.
Are you preparing for a teaching exam instead? The same approach exists for the CRPE in CRPE Pense-Bêtes. And the entire range, from primary to high school, is in the Pense-Bêtes collection.
Printed on demand in Europe, free delivery
The book is printed on demand in a partner workshop in Europe. Allow 5 to 10 working days between ordering and receipt. Delivery is free, with no minimum purchase, everywhere in metropolitan France.
Before choosing, read our guide: the method for memorizing in nursing school — the memorization techniques that work, the concepts that pose the most problems, and the most costly revision errors.