Abdominal Assessment for NCLEX

[coastalsoul06]

I am planning on taking the NCLEX in a few weeks and realized that I may have been taught the wrong order to conduct an abdominal assessment. If I can remember correctly, my nursing school taught us to "Inspect, Auscultate, Palpate, then Percuss". However, on UWorld it seems like they are saying to "Inspect, Auscultate, Percuss, then Palpate".

Does anyone know what the correct order actually is and what would likely be used by NCLEX? I can imagine it's probably a good drag and drop question so I want to be prepared!

[pro-student]

According to Bates, the order is inspect, asscultate, percuss, palpate but it doesn’t really matter much. The important thing to remember is, with the abdomen, you auscultate before percussion or palpating because they can change the frequency of bowel sounds. It’s the exception to the IPPA rule.

That’s not something the NCLEX is likely to test as a direct recall question. How they would likely test that information would be to give a scenario in which you need to do an abdominal assessment and asked something like, “after inspecting the abdomen, your next step should be...” You would want to choose auscultate and percuss or palpate would be there as distractors.

Whether you percuss or palpate first is minutia and the NCLEX is going to test your on the bigger, important concepts (like knowing you need to auscultate before putting hands on the abdomen).

[juliet29]

3 hours ago, pro-student said:

According to Bates, the order is inspect, asscultate, percuss, palpate but it doesn’t really matter much. The important thing to remember is, with the abdomen, you auscultate before percussion or palpating because they can change the frequency of bowel sounds. It’s the exception to the IPPA rule.

That’s not something the NCLEX is likely to test as a direct recall question. How they would likely test that information would be to give a scenario in which you need to do an abdominal assessment and asked something like, “after inspecting the abdomen, your next step should be...” You would want to choose auscultate and percuss or palpate would be there as distractors.

Whether you percuss or palpate first is minutia and the NCLEX is going to test your on the bigger, important concepts (like knowing you need to auscultate before putting hands on the abdomen).

Trust me they have asked similar question in that order. So please is better you know them in order

[ngulino33]

I just checked my ATI Fundamentals text book and they state, "inspect, auscultate, percuss, palpate."