NURS Med Surg test questions Pain Management 100% Correct Answers, Download to Score A

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Chapter 12 Pain Management 1. The nurse who is a member of the palliative care team is assessing a patient. The patient indicates that he has been saving his PRN analgesics until the pain is intens... e because his pain control has been inadequate. What teaching should the nurse do with this patient? A) Medication should be taken when pain levels are low so the pain is easier to reduce. B) Pain medication can be increased when the pain becomes intense. C) It is difficult to control chronic pain, so this is an inevitable part of the disease process. D) The patient will likely benefit more from distraction than pharmacologic interventions. Ans: A Feedback: Better pain control can be achieved with a preventive approach, reducing the amount of time patients are in pain. Low levels of pain are easier to reduce or control than intense levels of pain. Pain medication is used to prevent pain so pain medication is not increased when pain becomes intense. Chronic pain is treatable. Giving the patient alternative methods to control pain is good, but it will not work if the patient is in so much pain that he cannot institute reliable alternative methods. 2. Two patients on your unit have recently returned to the postsurgical unit after knee arthroplasty. One patient is reporting pain of 8 to 9 on a 0-to-10 pain scale, whereas the other patient is reporting a pain level of 3 to 4 on the same pain scale. What is the nurse’s most plausible rationale for understanding the patients’ different perceptions of pain? A) Endorphin levels may vary between patients, affecting the perception of pain. B) One of the patients is exaggerating his or her sense of pain. C) The patients are likely experiencing a variance in vasoconstriction. D) One of the patients may be experiencing opioid tolerance. Ans: A Feedback: Different people feel different degrees of pain from similar stimuli. Opioid tolerance is associated with chronic pain treatment and would not likely apply to these patients. The nurse should not assume the patient is exaggerating the pain because the patient is the best authority of his or her existence of pain, and definitions for pain state that pain is “whatever the person says it is, existing whenever the experiencing person says it does.” 3. You are frequently assessing an 84-year-old woman’s pain after she suffered a humeral fracture in a fall. When applying the nursing process in pain management for a patient of this age, what principle should you best apply? A) Monitor for signs of drug toxicity due to a decrease in metabolism. B) Monitor for an increase in absorption of the drug due to age-related changes. C) Monitor for a paradoxical increase in pain with opioid administration. D) Administer analgesics every 4 to 6 hours as ordered to control pain. Ans: A 4. The nurse is assessing a patient’s pain while the patient awaits a cholecystectomy. The patient is tearful, hesitant to move, and grimacing. When asked, the patient rates his pain as a 2 at this time using a 0-to-10 pain scale. How should the nurse best respond to this assessment finding? A) Remind the patient that he is indeed experiencing pain. B) Reinforce teaching about the pain scale number system. C) Reassess the patient’s pain in 30 minutes. D) Administer an analgesic and then reassess. Ans: B 5. You are creating a nursing care plan for a patient with a primary diagnosis of cellulitis and a secondary diagnosis of chronic pain. What common trait of patients who live with chronic pain should inform your care planning? A) They are typically more comfortable with underlying pain than patients without chronic pain. B) They often have a lower pain threshold than patients without chronic pain. C) They often have an increased tolerance of pain. D) They can experience acute pain in addition to c [Show More]

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