which patient would you see first?

Here is a strategy that may help some test takers" for those type of questions when nclex asks you "which patient would you see first?" or like when you are given 4 patients and asked to analyze their condition to determine who is least stable

heres what i did

I wrote down on my board before i started my exam

stable vs unstable

acute vs chronic

ABCs

real vs potential

expected vs unexpected

For each of the answer choices..i looked at them INDIVIDUALLY and determined if this patient was UNSTABLE, was this an ACUTE problem, ABC prioritization, are the having a REAL problem that needs to be fixed now? Lastly, is their outcome expected or UNEXPECTED....when i used that strategy for those prioritization type questions when they give you 4 patients and ask you to analyze "who is the least stable?" It helped me narrow down my choices to selecting the correct answer.

I hope it helps someone here b/c i saw it on another nclex site and it helped me in my practice tests and the actual exam ...

best of luck everyone!!!