This guide is filled with essential nursing content, tips, strategies, and other indispensable information to help you prepare for the NCLEX-PN examination. It includes all-new information on the latest test plan, plus many questions in the new alternate item formats. The text provides rationales for correct and incorrect answers, as well as strategies for approaching similar questions. Pyramid Terms, key terms defined at the beginning of each chapter, give students a quick review of each content area. Pyramid Points, bulleted items located throughout the content outlines, identify content that typically appears on the NCLEX-PN exam. Pyramid to Success sections at the beginning of each chapter or major unit of the book provide an overview of the chapter, guidance and direction regarding the focus of review in the content area, and its relative importance to the current NCLEX-PN test plan. The text and accompanying CD-ROM provide thousands of practice questions. Every question in the book provides a correct answer, rationales for all responses, test-taking strategy, level of cognitive ability, integrated concepts and processes, category of client needs, and reference to an Elsevier nursing textbook. Text includes a comprehensive exam consisting of 300 questions related to all content areas in the book and representative of the percentages identified in the 2005 NCLEX-PN test plan. Alternate item format questions provide practice with mastering prioritizing, decision-making, and critical thinking skills, and help prepare users for this additional component of the NCLEX-PN exam. Text presents introductory chapters on the NCLEX exam, test-taking skills, and the NCLEX-PN from a students perspective. Features a new chapter addressing transitional needs of foreign-educated nurses. The unit on Growth and Development Across the Lifespan has been completely updated. Includes 3,500 questions, approximately 500 more than the 2nd edition. All of the questions in the book, plus additional questions, are included on the CD-ROM. New alternate item format questions include drag-n-drop, illustration questions, and multiple response questions, to prepare readers for the addition of these questions to the NCLEX-PN examination. The CD-ROM allows readers to practice randomly selected alternate item format questions in study and quiz modes.