NUR 301

Study Guide

Exam 2

1. What type of patients require a focused assessment?

2. What would sputum look like for someone who suffers from allergies, a virus, a fungus and/or a
bacteria?
3. How does a nurse assess for dyspnea?
4. What other assessment findings might you see with someone who is short of breath, using
purse-lip breathing and is seated in the tripod position?
5. What is clubbing? What causes it?
6. What are crackles? How does the nurse appropriately auscultate to assess for crackles?
7. When auscultating the lungs and snoring sounds are heard, what would the nurse do next?
8. What are crackles? What sounds would you hear as crackles improve or disappear?
9. What are Bronchovesicular sounds? Where and when do you hear them?
10. How does the nurse appropriately assess for vocal fremitus?
11. Describe the respiratory assessment of someone with a pleural effusion.
12. What is it called when the patient has air in the subcutaneous tissue? What does it feel and
sound like?
13. What does a respiratory, cardiac and GI assessment look like in a healthy adult?
14. What do the systolic and diastolic blood pressures indicate?
15. What are some of the signs and symptoms one might find during an assessment of someone
having chest pain or an acute MI?
16. What is pericarditis? What would the cardiovascular assessment of someone with pericarditis
look like?
17. What’s the difference between pericarditis and angina?
18. During an assessment how does the nurse determine if shortness of breath is caused by an
underlying respiratory issue or an underlying cardiac issue?
19. What does venous insufficiency look like?
20. What is the process for assessing carotid pulses? Femoral pulses? Brachial pulses?
21. What does the nurse do if, during an assessment, he/she cannot hear the patient’s heart sounds
because the patient’s lung sounds block out the heart sounds?
22. What is edema? What does it look like? How do we describe and document the presence of
edema?
23. When assessing the valves of the heart, where do we place the stethoscope to listen to each
valve? What part of the stethoscope do we use?
24. When do we hear the following heart sounds: S1, S2, S3, S4, split sounds.
25. Anatomically where do we hear the above heart sounds?
26. Where and how do we auscultate the aorta?
27. What does a systolic and/or diastolic murmur sound like?
28. What other assessment findings might you expect if your patient has JVD?
29. What are the risk factors for hypertension?
30. How might a person in heart failure present….meaning, what are his/her symptoms?
31. How/what does the nurse assess when the patient complains of heartburn?
32. If your patient has abdominal distention, what other symptoms might he/she have?
33. Your patient complains of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting. What else would the nurse assess?
34. How do you perform a urinary assessment on a healthy individual? How do you perform a
urinary assessment on someone with urinary problems or renal failure?
35. What’s the best indicator of fluid status?
36. What does the normal abdomen look like on assessment?
37. What’s the best method to determine the extent of abdominal distention?
38. What are the steps used when performing a GI and abdominal assessment?
39. How do we assess bowel sound? What’s the methodology?
40. What bowel sounds do we hear in each quadrant and area of the abdomen?
41. What’s the technique we use when palpating the abdomen?
42. How do we percuss the abdomen? What are the steps?
43. What sounds do we hear over the abdomen when percussed? What organs might we be
feeling?
44. What are the risk factors for esophageal cancer? What teaching would the nurse do about
prevention?
45. Who is at risk for colon cancer? What are the risks for colon cancer? What teaching would the
nurse do about prevention?
46. How do we appropriately palpate the liver?
47. What GI risk factors does alcoholism have?