NURS 550 Final Exam Questions And Accurate
Answers Graded A+
Attention definitions: Alert, lethargic, obtunded, Stuporous, coma - Response Alert - pt
is awake and aware
Lethargic - you have to speak to pt in a loud and forceful manner to get a response
Obtunded - you must shake pt to get a response
Stuporous - arousable except by painful stimuli (sternal rub)
Coma - pt is completely unarousabe
Memory Answer Short term memory - covers events or memories that happened
minutes to days before
Long term memory - covers event or memories that happened months to years before
Orientation - Answer Aware of person, place and time
Perceptions - Answer Awareness of the objects in the environment with regards the five
senses and their interrelationships
Thought processes - Answer The logic, coherence, and relevance of the patient's
thoughts and goals; how ppl think
Insight - Answer Awareness that thought, symptoms, or behaviors are normal or
abnormal; e.g. distinguishing that a daydream or hallucination is not real
Judgment - Answer process of comparing and evaluating different possible courses of
action
,Affect - Answer The observable mood of a person expressed through facial expression,
body movements, and voice
Mood - Response The sustained emotion of the patient euthymic, dysthymic, manic
Language - Response The complex symbolic system for expressing written and verbal
thoughts, emotion, attention, and memory
Higher cognitive functions - Response level of intelligence assessed by vocabulary,
knowledge base, calculations, and abstract thinking
Speech and Language: Quantity, Rate, Loud, Articulation of words - Response Quantity:
is patient talkative or silent
Rate: is the speech fast or slow
Loufulness: Is speech loud or soft
Articulation of words: does the patient speak clearly and distinctly
Fluency: involves the rate, flow, melody of speech
Define: hesitencies in speech
Mono-tone infections
Circumlocutions
Paraphasias - Answer Hesitencies in speech - as found in patients with aphasia from
strokes
Mono-tone inflections - schizophrenia or severe depression
Circumlocutions-words or phrases are substituted for the word a person can't
remember; e.g., "the thing you block out your writing with" for an eraser
Paraphasias: words are misshapened ("I write with a den"), incorrect ("I write write with
a branch"), or invented ("I write with a dar")
Abnormal thought processes:
,Circumstantiality
Derailment
Flight of Ideas
Neologisms
Incoherence
Blocking
Confabulation
Perseveration
Echolalia
Clanging - Response Circumstantiality- speech that is indirect and circuitous because
the patients used many details irrelevant to the point
Derailment- speech where an individual changes topics without any logical relationship
between the tropics
Flight of ideas- rapid changing of topics within a very short time and usually logica
Neologisms - words invented or distorted
Incoherence - speech unintelligible because it is illogical
Blocking - sudden stop of speaking before an idea is finished in normal ppl as well
Confabulation - distortion of facts to fill in for amnestic gaps
Perseveration - Insistent repetition of words or phrases
Echolalia- repetition of other persons words or phrases
Clanging - selection of a word based upon sound rather than meaning
Abnormal Thought content
Compulsions
Obsessions
Phobias
Anxiety - Answer Compulsions - repetitive behaviors that a person feels driven to
perform to avoid or create some future state of affairs
, Obsessions - recurrent, uncontrollable thoughts, images, or impulses that a patient
considers unacceptable
Phobias - persistent fear of a stimuli the patient feels is irrational
Anxiety - apprehension or fear that may be focused (phobia) or free floating (general
sense of dread)
Abnormal Thought Content: delusions - Answer False, fixed beliefs that are not shared
by other members of the person's culture
Somatic delusions: believing that one has a disease or defect that he does not
Systematized delusion: a single delusion with many elaborations around a single theme
all systematized into a complex network
Delusions of persecution, grandeur, jealousy, controlled by outside forces
Delusion of reference: person believes An external event or object has some kind of
special personal relevance to them; i.e. a remark about the weather means the patient
must go out and purchase an automobile
perceptual disturbances:
Illusions
Hallucinations - Key Illusions - internal stimuli, misinterpretation of real stimuli; ex.
postman delivers mail, thus there is a conspiracy to poison the patient
Hallucinations - a subjective external stimuli the patient hears or sees that others do not
hear or see and that the patient may not recognize as false; these can be auditory,
visual, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile
How to assess insight and judgment on a clinic or hospital visit? - Answer Patient with
psychological disorders often lack insight into their disease
Judgement by observing the patients responses to stressors on their relationships,
jobs, finances
3 methods of testing attention- Answer Digital span: ask the patient to repeat a string of
numbers back to you
Serial 7s: ask the patient to subtract serial 7s from 100
Answers Graded A+
Attention definitions: Alert, lethargic, obtunded, Stuporous, coma - Response Alert - pt
is awake and aware
Lethargic - you have to speak to pt in a loud and forceful manner to get a response
Obtunded - you must shake pt to get a response
Stuporous - arousable except by painful stimuli (sternal rub)
Coma - pt is completely unarousabe
Memory Answer Short term memory - covers events or memories that happened
minutes to days before
Long term memory - covers event or memories that happened months to years before
Orientation - Answer Aware of person, place and time
Perceptions - Answer Awareness of the objects in the environment with regards the five
senses and their interrelationships
Thought processes - Answer The logic, coherence, and relevance of the patient's
thoughts and goals; how ppl think
Insight - Answer Awareness that thought, symptoms, or behaviors are normal or
abnormal; e.g. distinguishing that a daydream or hallucination is not real
Judgment - Answer process of comparing and evaluating different possible courses of
action
,Affect - Answer The observable mood of a person expressed through facial expression,
body movements, and voice
Mood - Response The sustained emotion of the patient euthymic, dysthymic, manic
Language - Response The complex symbolic system for expressing written and verbal
thoughts, emotion, attention, and memory
Higher cognitive functions - Response level of intelligence assessed by vocabulary,
knowledge base, calculations, and abstract thinking
Speech and Language: Quantity, Rate, Loud, Articulation of words - Response Quantity:
is patient talkative or silent
Rate: is the speech fast or slow
Loufulness: Is speech loud or soft
Articulation of words: does the patient speak clearly and distinctly
Fluency: involves the rate, flow, melody of speech
Define: hesitencies in speech
Mono-tone infections
Circumlocutions
Paraphasias - Answer Hesitencies in speech - as found in patients with aphasia from
strokes
Mono-tone inflections - schizophrenia or severe depression
Circumlocutions-words or phrases are substituted for the word a person can't
remember; e.g., "the thing you block out your writing with" for an eraser
Paraphasias: words are misshapened ("I write with a den"), incorrect ("I write write with
a branch"), or invented ("I write with a dar")
Abnormal thought processes:
,Circumstantiality
Derailment
Flight of Ideas
Neologisms
Incoherence
Blocking
Confabulation
Perseveration
Echolalia
Clanging - Response Circumstantiality- speech that is indirect and circuitous because
the patients used many details irrelevant to the point
Derailment- speech where an individual changes topics without any logical relationship
between the tropics
Flight of ideas- rapid changing of topics within a very short time and usually logica
Neologisms - words invented or distorted
Incoherence - speech unintelligible because it is illogical
Blocking - sudden stop of speaking before an idea is finished in normal ppl as well
Confabulation - distortion of facts to fill in for amnestic gaps
Perseveration - Insistent repetition of words or phrases
Echolalia- repetition of other persons words or phrases
Clanging - selection of a word based upon sound rather than meaning
Abnormal Thought content
Compulsions
Obsessions
Phobias
Anxiety - Answer Compulsions - repetitive behaviors that a person feels driven to
perform to avoid or create some future state of affairs
, Obsessions - recurrent, uncontrollable thoughts, images, or impulses that a patient
considers unacceptable
Phobias - persistent fear of a stimuli the patient feels is irrational
Anxiety - apprehension or fear that may be focused (phobia) or free floating (general
sense of dread)
Abnormal Thought Content: delusions - Answer False, fixed beliefs that are not shared
by other members of the person's culture
Somatic delusions: believing that one has a disease or defect that he does not
Systematized delusion: a single delusion with many elaborations around a single theme
all systematized into a complex network
Delusions of persecution, grandeur, jealousy, controlled by outside forces
Delusion of reference: person believes An external event or object has some kind of
special personal relevance to them; i.e. a remark about the weather means the patient
must go out and purchase an automobile
perceptual disturbances:
Illusions
Hallucinations - Key Illusions - internal stimuli, misinterpretation of real stimuli; ex.
postman delivers mail, thus there is a conspiracy to poison the patient
Hallucinations - a subjective external stimuli the patient hears or sees that others do not
hear or see and that the patient may not recognize as false; these can be auditory,
visual, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile
How to assess insight and judgment on a clinic or hospital visit? - Answer Patient with
psychological disorders often lack insight into their disease
Judgement by observing the patients responses to stressors on their relationships,
jobs, finances
3 methods of testing attention- Answer Digital span: ask the patient to repeat a string of
numbers back to you
Serial 7s: ask the patient to subtract serial 7s from 100
