ATI LPN
Brunner & Suddarth's Textbook of Medical-Surgical Nursing 14e (Hinkle 2017)
Chapter 16 : End-of-Life Care Questions
Question 1 of 5
A hospice nurse is caring for a 22-year-old with a terminal diagnosis of leukemia. When updating this patients plan of nursing care, what should the nurse prioritize?
Correct Answer: C
Rationale: Hospice care focuses on quality of life, but, by necessity, it usually includes realistic emotional, social, spiritual, and financial preparation for death. Financial advice and actions aimed at post-death interaction would not be appropriate priorities.
Question 2 of 5
A pediatric nurse is emotionally distraught by the death of a 9-year-old girl who received care on the unit over the course of many admissions spanning several years. What action is the most appropriate response to the nurses own grief?
Correct Answer: D
Rationale: In many settings, staff members organize or attend memorial services to support families and other caregivers who find comfort in joining each other to remember and celebrate the lives of patients. Taking time off should not be necessary and posting mementos would be inappropriate. It would be highly inappropriate to solicit emotional support from the patients family during their time of loss.
Question 3 of 5
As a staff member in a local hospice, a nurse deals with death and dying on a frequent basis. Where would be the safe venue for the nurse to express her feelings of frustration and grief about a patient who has recently died?
Correct Answer: B
Rationale: In hospice settings, where death, grief, and loss are expected outcomes of patient care, interdisciplinary colleagues rely on each other for support, using meeting time to express frustration, sadness, anger, and other emotions; to learn coping skills from each other; and to speak about how they were affected by the lives of those patients who have died since the last meeting. Public settings are inappropriate places to express frustration about the death of a patient.
Question 4 of 5
A hospice nurse is well aware of how difficult it is to deal with others pain on a daily basis. This nurse should put healthy practices into place to guard against what outcome?
Correct Answer: C
Rationale: Well before the nurse exhibits symptoms of stress or burnout, he or she should acknowledge the difficulty of coping with others pain on a daily basis and put healthy practices in place that guard against emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion is more likely to have deleterious effects than inefficiency, social withdrawal, or weight gain, though these may signal emotional exhaustion.
Question 5 of 5
The hospice nurse is caring for a 45-year-old mother of three young children in the patients home. During the most recent visit, the nurse has observed that the patient has a new onset of altered mental status, likely resulting from recently diagnosed brain metastases. What goal of nursing interventions should the nurse identify?
Correct Answer: D
Rationale: Nursing interventions should be aimed at accommodating the change in the patients status and maintaining her safety. The scenario does not indicate the need either to sedate the patient or to move her to an acute-care facility. If the family has the resources, there is no need to bring in nurses to be with the patient around-the-clock, and the scenario does not indicate that death is imminent.