ATI Respiratory System Assessment 2.0 Questions and Answers| Complete and Verified 2025/2026

ATI Respiratory System Assessment 2.0 Questions and Answers| Complete and Verified 2025/2026 A nurse is assessing a client with COPD. The client is using accessory muscles to breathe and has diminished breath sounds. What should the nurse do first? Sit the client up in high Fowler’s and check oxygen saturation. Using accessory muscles means they’re struggling to breathe, so you want to open their airways more and check how bad it is. During a respiratory assessment, a nurse notices the patient’s trachea is shifted to the left. What does this likely indicate? It might be a tension pneumothorax on the right side. The air trapped in the pleural space pushes everything over to the opposite side — that’s a medical emergency. A patient has a productive cough with green sputum and crackles in the right lower lobe. What does this suggest? It could be pneumonia. Green sputum usually means infection and crackles are common when fluid is in the lungs. The nurse hears high-pitched, musical sounds on expiration when assessing a client’s lungs. What is this sound and what might it indicate? 2 That’s wheezing, and it usually points to narrowed airways — think asthma or bronchospasm. A client suddenly becomes short of breath after surgery and has chest pain. What should the nurse suspect? Possibly a pulmonary embolism. That’s a post-op risk, especially if they’ve been immobile. It’s sudden and serious. A nurse is doing a focused respiratory assessment on a client with asthma. What findings would show the client’s condition is worsening? Decreased breath sounds or no wheezing — which actually means less air is moving, not improvement. While percussing a patient’s chest, the nurse hears dullness over the left lower lobe. What might this mean? There could be fluid or consolidation, like in pneumonia. Dullness usually replaces the normal hollow sound. A patient with a chest tube complains of increased shortness of breath. What should the nurse check first? Look at the chest tube for any kinks, clots, or if it’s become dislodged. That could stop it from working right. A nurse is listening to lung sounds and hears coarse crackles. What are these and when do they 3 usually happen? Coarse crackles are loud, bubbly sounds from fluid or mucus in large airways. You often hear them in heart failure or pneumonia. A client has a respiratory rate of 8 breaths per minute after receiving opioids. What should the nurse do? Call for help and prepare to give naloxone. That rate’s way too low — they’re probably