SATA Help??

[scrubsandasmile]

Anyone have good advice for SATA questions? I do really well on all other forms of questions- hot spot, multiple choice etc, but I always miss SOMETHING on SATA, which on the NCLEX will do me no good, since there is no partial credit.

I have been doing lots of practice for NCLEX which I will take on the 11th, but SATA really seems to be my weak spot. Can anyone give me some helpful advice?

[ukjenn231]

When I took the NCLEX a couple of years ago I bought a book that was ALL SATA. It helped me to do a bunch of them and see the rationale.

[scrubsandasmile]

Ukjenn231 do you by any chance remember the name of the book? I've googled essentially "Select all that apply NCLEX" but have found that many of the sites I have found for practice do not have explanations, which is unhelpful..

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Try looking at the responses as individual questions, kind of like true false. If not you may get overwhelmed at trying to find all the right answers and start second guessing yourself.

For example:

There are seven main colors found in the spectrum of a rainbow. Out of the list below, select all the colors commonly found in a rainbow

a. red

b. chartreuse

c. magenta

d. violet

e. blue

f. green

g. white

So the question is asking "Is this value a color in the rainbow spectrum"

ask the question of each response. What do you know about the question? I know ROYGBIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)

Is a. true or false? TRUE

b. false

c. false

d. true

e. true

f. true

g. false

so the answer to this sata would be: A, D, E, F

So if the question was "You are working in a medical-surgical unit. While reviewing your patient's chart you note that the admitting physician suspects the patient has Addison's Disease. The unit secretary hands you the morning lab results for your patient, which of the following lab results would be indicative of a possible diagnosis of Addison's Disease? Select all that apply.

a. Serum Na 136 mEq/L

b. serum K 5.4 mEq/L

c. plasma HCO3 13 mEq/L

d. BUN 23 mEq/L

e. fasting plasma glucose 70 mg/dL

First what do you know about Addison's...usually high K, low Na, low glucose, high BUN, low HCO3, high ACTH, low cortisol.

Knowing standard lab ranges, you should be able to answer the question...

Na-normal range so "false"

K-high so "true"

HCO3-low so "true"

BUN-high so "true"

glucose--low normal (but still normal) so "false"

So the answer would be B, C, D.

[scrubsandasmile]

Justbeachynurse- I never looked at it that way!! That is SO helpful, thank you so much!

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Justbeachynurse- I never looked at it that way!! That is SO helpful, thank you so much!

You are very welcome. It was an epiphany I had while studying late one evening for a nursing school exam (my med-surg instructor just loved SATA questions and of course no partial questions...my son overheard me saying yes/no and asked if "yes no" questions were like the true/false questions he had in school and voila!