NCLEX-RN flashcards: what's in the free deck

The free NCLEX-RN course on Encodr has 32 units, 189 chapters and 2,583 study cards, built against the 2026 NCSBN NCLEX-RN Test Plan. This post is a map of it. It walks the units in the order the course teaches them, says how many chapters and cards each group holds, and points out which parts are memorization and which are judgment, because the two need different kinds of practice.

Encodr is a study aid, not clinical guidance. Your nursing program, your facility policy and your state board decide how you practice.

Why the units are not in test-plan order

The test plan lists eight client needs categories. The course does not follow that list. It follows teaching order: how nursing thinking works first, then law and management, then safety, then basic care, then the body systems, then assessment and labs, then medications, then the lifespan and mental health, and last the exam itself. Each category's share of the cards stays close to its share of the exam, so the weighting still matches. The categories and their ranges are explained in the NCLEX-RN test plan client needs categories.

Units 1 to 5: how to think, and the rules you work inside

Unit 1, how nursing thinking works (5 chapters, 66 cards) covers the nursing process, prioritization frameworks, vital sign norms, abbreviations and conversions. It is short on purpose. It gives you the vocabulary every later unit assumes.

Unit 2, legal and ethical practice and client rights (12 chapters, 199 cards) covers scope of practice, negligence, consent, advance directives, confidentiality, reporting duties, ethics and documentation.

Unit 3, delegation, prioritization and care coordination (11 chapters, 218 cards) covers delegation, assignments for the RN, LPN and unlicensed assistive personnel, prioritizing several clients, handoff, discharge and quality improvement.

Unit 4, infection prevention and control (10 chapters, 136 cards) covers the chain of infection, standard and transmission-based precautions, PPE and sterile technique.

Unit 5, client safety and emergency preparedness (12 chapters, 184 cards) covers falls, restraints, patient identification, error reporting, fire and oxygen safety, disaster triage and home safety.

Together these five units hold 50 chapters and 803 cards, nearly a third of the course. They are mostly application. Few of them ask you to recall a number. They ask who should do a task, which client to see first, or which action stays within scope. If that is the part you find hardest, NCLEX priority and delegation questions walks through how to answer them.

Units 6 to 16: basic care and the body systems

Unit 6, mobility, skin and elimination (7 chapters, 114 cards) and Unit 7, nutrition, comfort, rest and end of life (8 chapters, 113 cards) are the basic care units. Unit 6 includes skin integrity and pressure injuries, which is where the Braden scale and pressure injury risk comes in.

Units 8 to 16 are the body-system units, and each is deliberately lean:

Units 6 to 16 together are 49 chapters and 575 cards. The body-system units are thinner than a full medical-surgical textbook because the exam weights physiological adaptation as one category among eight, and the course keeps that proportion. That makes them a review and a gap finder, not a replacement for your program's pathophysiology course. If a unit here feels thin to you, that is a signal to go back to your textbook on that system.

Units 17 to 20: assessment, labs, tests and procedures

These four units (21 chapters, 294 cards) cover physical assessment and monitoring (unit 17, 67 cards), laboratory values (unit 18, 78 cards), diagnostic tests and procedures (unit 19, 71 cards) and perioperative and therapeutic procedures (unit 20, 78 cards).

This is the most memorization-heavy stretch outside pharmacology, because lab ranges and test preparation steps are facts you either know or do not. It also has the most direct overlap with exam items that give you a number and ask what to do. Exam items that include lab values give the reference range, and reference ranges differ by lab, so the point of the cards is to recognize what a result means and what comes next, not to recite one lab's cutoffs. NCLEX lab values: what to know for the exam goes through that unit in detail. Unit 17 also includes risk assessments such as the Braden scale, and the Apgar score sits in the newborn chapter of unit 29 (see the Apgar score chart).

Units 21 to 26: medications and IV therapy

Six units, 32 chapters and 393 cards cover pharmacology and parenteral therapy:

• Unit 21, medication administration and dosage calculation (8 chapters, 89 cards): safe administration, routes, adverse effects, high-alert drugs and the math.
• Unit 22, IV, blood and parenteral therapy (5 chapters, 56 cards): IV fluids, site care and complications, central lines, transfusion reactions.
• Unit 23, cardiovascular and respiratory medications (5 chapters, 78 cards).
• Unit 24, endocrine, GI and renal medications (4 chapters, 56 cards).
• Unit 25, pain, CNS and psychotropic medications (5 chapters, 62 cards).
• Unit 26, anti-infective, oncology and specialty medications (5 chapters, 52 cards).

Medications are the single most memorization-heavy block, and the exam uses generic drug names. Study them by class and by what the nurse monitors for, not as a flat list of names. How to memorize the top 200 drugs covers the method, and the IV flow rate and drip rate formulas post covers the arithmetic that unit 21 drills. The dosage cards exist because the exam tests medication calculations, not because Encodr gives dosing advice.

Units 27 to 31: the lifespan, maternal-child care and mental health

Unit 27, lifespan health promotion and screening (7 chapters, 67 cards) covers growth and development, milestones, screening, immunizations and teaching.

Unit 28, pregnancy, labor and delivery (5 chapters, 69 cards) and Unit 29, postpartum, newborn and pediatric care (5 chapters, 84 cards) hold the maternal-child content. These include date calculations (Naegele's rule) and newborn scoring.

Unit 30, therapeutic communication, coping and crisis (8 chapters, 112 cards) and Unit 31, mental health and substance use disorders (7 chapters, 109 cards) cover psychosocial integrity. Unit 30 is application-heavy: the question is usually which response or action is therapeutic. Unit 31 is more recall of disorders and withdrawal.

Unit 32: the exam itself

Unit 32, clinical judgment and the NCLEX exam (5 chapters, 77 cards) covers the six-step clinical judgment model, the Next Generation item types, prioritization and test-taking strategy, and the structure of the adaptive exam. Read it twice: once early so you know what you are training for, and once in the last week. The mechanics are also written up in how the NCLEX-RN CAT exam works.

How to use the map

A reasonable order is to work the course front to back once, then spend extra time where your own weak spots are. Keep the units that are mostly recall on a daily spaced schedule, and keep the application-heavy units in mixed sessions, which is the point of interleaving versus blocking. For a full plan around the course, see how to study for the NCLEX-RN. If you want a feel for how a long deck gets finished, the flashcard deck time estimator turns 2,583 cards into weeks for your own daily limit.

Flashcards and questions do different jobs, and flashcards vs question banks explains why you want both. The same teaching approach is used in the NREMT EMT course, and how to study for the NREMT EMT exam is a useful comparison if you are weighing a related certification.

Start the free NCLEX-RN flashcard course and it will schedule the reviews for you.