Nokea
A nurse is providing education about trauma and its effects to a community group in a community that has just been hit by a devastating tornado. One of the participants asked about what kind of support a survivor of the tornado will need. Which would be the best response of the nurse?
- A. If a person is willing to share his or her feelings about what has happened, he or she is not dealing with their feelings effectively.
- B. It is counterproductive for people to share what has happened to them and their feelings about it as there is nothing more to be done.
- C. If a person is reluctant to share his or her feelings, he or she may be denying his or her importance and may be at increased risk for future problems such as PTSD.
- D. It is best to wait until a survivor's life has returned to normal before dealing with the trauma.
Correct Answer: C
Rationale: Reluctance to share feelings may indicate denial, increasing PTSD risk, while early expression of feelings supports effective trauma processing.
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Which of the following interventions would be most effective for friends and family members to implement in order to boost the self-esteem of a person who has just experienced trauma or abuse?
- A. To identify a list of support people or activities in the community
- B. To remind them to calm down when they appear to be experiencing a flashback
- C. To encourage them to tell their story repeatedly to everyone they meet
- D. To help them to refocus their view of themselves from being victims to being survivors
Correct Answer: D
Rationale: Reframing the person as a survivor rather than a victim fosters empowerment and boosts self-esteem, unlike social support lists or unhelpful flashback interventions.
Which of the following outcomes would take priority for a client who has survived trauma or abuse?
- A. The client will demonstrate healthy, effective ways of dealing with the stress.
- B. The client will be physically safe.
- C. The client will establish a social support system in the community.
- D. The client will distinguish between ideas of self-harm and taking action on those ideas.
- E. The client will express emotions nondestructively.
Correct Answer: B,D
Rationale: Ensuring physical safety and distinguishing self-harm thoughts from actions are top priorities to prevent immediate harm, surpassing other therapeutic goals.
What is the major difference between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder?
- A. In acute stress disorder, the client is likely to develop exacerbation of symptoms.
- B. In PTSD, the recovery rate is 80% within 3 months.
- C. The severity and duration of the trauma are the most important variables in acute stress disorder.
- D. In PTSD, the symptoms occur 3 months or more after the trauma.
Correct Answer: D
Rationale: PTSD is characterized by symptoms starting 3 months or more after a trauma, while acute stress disorder occurs within 2 days to 4 weeks post-trauma, with different recovery patterns.
Which of the following statements by the nurse would be most appropriate to a colleague who very quietly and numbly tells the nurse that she had arrived at the scene of an automobile/pedestrian accident and unsuccessfully performed CPR on a victim 3 days ago? The nurse and her colleague are sitting in the break room and no one else is present.
- A. Tell me what you saw.
- B. That is horrible!
- C. Why did you perform CPR?
- D. I know how you feel. The same thing happened to me several years ago and I never recovered.
Correct Answer: A
Rationale: Encouraging the colleague to describe the event facilitates processing the trauma, reducing the risk of pathological responses, unlike judgmental or unsupportive statements.
Which of the following would the nurse know are the major elements of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?
- A. Trying to avoid any places or people or situations that may trigger memories of the trauma
- B. Reexperiencing the trauma through dreams or recurrent and intrusive thoughts
- C. Becoming increasingly more isolated
- D. Emotional numbing such as feeling detached from others
- E. Being on guard, irritable, or experiencing hyperarousal
Correct Answer: B,D,E
Rationale: The major elements of PTSD are reexperiencing trauma (dreams/intrusive thoughts), emotional numbing (detachment), and hyperarousal (irritability), with avoidance and isolation as secondary features.