What if the test answers are not right?

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Apr 12, 2014

I think it's D. You want to maintain her airway and breathing first in case she aspirates. What was the right answer? I've had issues with nursing exam first but fortunately my instructor takes into account the class answers and throws it out if more than half got it wrong. But she keeps most of the questions though. Remember on NCLEX we don't have the luxury of having someone look over the questions and throw it out..

It's A as discussed above. Never just turn the head if anything log roll the body. Never force anything in the mouth. Loosening clothing is not a priority action. Documenting time of onset is a priority action

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Apr 12, 2014

Besides turning just the head to the side may occlude the airway (remember head tilt chin lift or modified jaw thrust and recovery positioning is patient on side not head to side

ampela · Apr 12, 2014

For some reason I thought it was to turn the patient to one side. Ugh need to read it more carefully. Thanks for clarifying! The answer was A.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Apr 13, 2014

Acknowledging that anecdote is not the singular of data, I offer the following tale.

As a legal nurse, I had a case once where a student alleged that she flunked out of her last semester because the exams were flawed and graded unfairly. She showed me a huge bundle of exam questions which she had answered wrong, according to her faculty, and she set about proving them wrong. She scoured the handouts and powerpoints they gave her; she pored over nursing texts and patient teaching materials. In so doing she found what she considered to be a number of questions that she had, in fact, answered correctly. She was trying to get the school to recognize these as correct so she would obtain a passing grade in the final.

I took the case on her side, and I looked at these papers very carefully, referring to her references and also to the explanatory materials the faculty had provided during her appeals period. I fully expected the faculty to be wrong, half-blind, or at least just obstinate in their defense of the indefensible. Imagine my surprise when halfway through the pile I realized that I had not yet found one question in which the student was, in fact, correct and performing at the level of an almost-new-graduate nurse. Imagine my chagrin when I got through the whole pile (and consulted with an education researcher on the meaning of some of the statistics given by the faculty.. they were scrupulously correct) and realized the only question she was entitled to had already been thrown out as a bad question.

The difference often was that while the student had often made choices that were factually correct, they were not the best answer for the question actually being asked, a question which sought the higher level of understanding of an RN. the fact is that she never would have passed the NCLEX...and that was, alas, a good thing, because she did not have the decision-making or assessment skills to be an RN. NCLEX would have weeded her out.

The school's process was correct, and they were correct in denying her a degree, regardless of how it would make their NCLEX pass-rate stats come out. Those are after-the-fact validation, feedback; flunking her was not prophylactic cover-your-butt on their part.

This is a process repeated all over academia about this time of year. "Weeding out" has an unfair sound to it, as if it were somehow more reasonable to let people who have just skated by until the going got tough to go ahead and pass the last semester, even though they had reached their limits at the end of the last one. I don't believe that's true.

Weeds are called weeds and removed from productive produce gardens for good reason. They can bloom and be beautiful elsewhere, but there's no way they'll make it into the menu as actual vegetables.

ampela · Apr 13, 2014

The old "critical thinking" still stands-- nursing students need to be able to develop these skills by the time they become nurses in the field. This is a great story. Thanks for sharing.

NuGuyNurse2b · Apr 14, 2014

I'm really curious...what is the answer, according to the school, vonnieb63?

NightNurseRN13 · Apr 14, 2014

She said the teacher also said A

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Apr 14, 2014

Esme12, I understand what your saying. I do agree. I was just answering "C" because I was following what the ATI book said, not what I believed was correct. I am constantly unsure of what answer to use because I am in the LPN to RN bridge and having to answer what the book says not what you would do in real life. I would be a good thing if one of the instructors could do that. Unfortunately our instructors do not sit down and discuss or explain anything, at least to me. There are other questions I would like for you to look over if you don't mind.

Sure post them