A nurse on a postsurgical unit is providing care based on a clinical pathway. When performing assessments and interventions with the aid of a pathway, the nurse should prioritize what goal?
- A. Helping the patient to achieve specific outcomes
- B. Balancing risks and benefits of interventions
- C. Documenting the patients response to therapy
- D. Staying accountable to the interdisciplinary team
Correct Answer: A
Rationale: Pathways are an EBP tool that is used primarily to move patients toward predetermined outcomes. Documentation, accountability, and balancing risks and benefits are appropriate, but helping the patient achieve outcomes is paramount.
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A nurse has accepted a position as a clinical nurse leader (CNL), a new role that has been launched within the past decade. In this role, the nurse should prioritize which of the following activities?
- A. Acting as a spokesperson for the nursing profession
- B. Generating and disseminating new nursing knowledge
- C. Diagnosing and treating health problems that have a predictable course
- D. Helping patients to navigate the health care system
Correct Answer: D
Rationale: The CNL is a nurse generalist with a masters degree in nursing and a special background in clinical leadership, educated to help patients navigate through the complex health care system. The other answers are incorrect because they are not what nursing has identified as the CNL role.
A nurse is planning a medical patients care with consideration of Maslows hierarchy of needs. Within this framework of understanding, what would be the nurses first priority?
- A. Allowing the family to see a newly admitted patient
- B. Ambulating the patient in the hallway
- C. Administering pain medication
- D. Teaching the patient to self-administer insulin safely
Correct Answer: C
Rationale: In Maslows hierarchy of needs, pain relief addresses the patients basic physiologic need. Activity, such as ambulation, is a higher level need above the physiologic need. Allowing the patient to see family addresses a higher level need related to love and belonging. Teaching the patient is also a higher level need related to the desire to know and understand and is not appropriate at this time, as the basic physiologic need of pain control must be addressed before the patient can address these higher level needs.
A hospice nurse is caring for a patient who is dying of lymphoma. According to Maslows hierarchy of needs, what dimension of care should the nurse consider primary in importance when caring for a dying patient?
- A. Spiritual
- B. Social
- C. Physiologic
- D. Emotional
Correct Answer: C
Rationale: Maslow ranked human needs as follows: physiologic needs; safety and security; sense of belonging and affection; esteem and self-respect; and self-actualization, which includes self-fulfillment, desire to know and understand, and aesthetic needs. Such a hierarchy of needs is a useful framework that can be applied to the various nursing models for assessment of a patients strengths, limitations, and need for nursing interventions. The other answers are incorrect because they are not of primary importance when caring for a dying patient, though each should certainly be addressed.
A nurse on a medical-surgical unit has asked to represent the unit on the hospitals quality committee. When describing quality improvement programs to nursing colleagues and members of other health disciplines, what characteristic should the nurse cite?
- A. These programs establish consequences for health care professionals actions.
- B. These programs focus on the processes used to provide care.
- C. These programs identify specific incidents related to quality.
- D. These programs seek to justify health care costs and systems.
Correct Answer: B
Rationale: Numerous models seek to improve the quality of health care delivery. A commonality among them is a focus on the processes that are used to provide care. Consequences, a focus on incidents, and justification for health care costs are not universal characteristics of quality improvement efforts.
Over the past several decades, nursing roles have changed and expanded in many ways. Which of the following factors has provided the strongest impetus for this change?
- A. The need to decrease the cost of health care
- B. The need to improve the quality of nursing education
- C. The need to increase the number of nursing jobs available
- D. The need to increase the public perception of nursing
Correct Answer: A
Rationale: The role of the nurse has expanded to improve the distribution of health care services and to decrease the cost of health care. The other answers are incorrect because the expansion of roles in nursing did not occur to improve education, increase the number of nursing jobs, or increase public perception.
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