A moderate amount of stress, such as preparing for an exam, can energize and organize a person.
Correct Answer
True
True. Not all stress is harmful; moderate, positive stress can sharpen focus and motivation, while excessive stress clouds thinking and impairs decision-making.
Category: Coping and Appraisal
Question 2
In the resistance stage of the general adaptation syndrome, symptoms lessen as the body adapts to a stressor that continues.
Correct Answer
True
True. After the alarm reaction, the body enters the resistance stage if it can adapt, and symptoms decline. If it cannot adapt and the stressor persists, exhaustion follows.
Category: Adaptation Models
Question 3
Stressors can build on one another, so a minor illness may become overwhelming when financial or job problems are also present.
Correct Answer
True
True. Stressors are cumulative, which is why the nurse looks beyond the chief complaint and asks about other pressures such as finances, transportation, and work.
Category: Coping and Appraisal
Question 4
Acute and chronic stressors can be present in the same patient at the same time.
Correct Answer
True
True. A patient with cancer, a chronic stressor, who then breaks an arm, an acute stressor, faces both at once, and the nurse assesses and treats each.
Category: Recognizing Stress
Question 5
Teaching a spouse or close family member along with the patient improves the chance that discharge instructions are understood correctly.
Correct Answer
True
True. Ill or stressed patients may not remember instructions, so including a family member and providing written information makes accurate understanding more likely.
Category: Family Health
Question 6
A family as a whole can experience stress, not only its individual members.
Correct Answer
True
True. Events such as a move, a job loss, or a serious illness affect the family unit, and when the family is stressed its members can develop physical and emotional symptoms.
Category: Family Health
Question 7
Untreated sleep apnea can keep the body in a stress response even during rest.
Correct Answer
True
True. Repeated breathing interruptions during sleep keep the fight-flight-freeze response active, which disrupts sleep and adds to the body's stress load.
Category: Physiologic Stress Response
Question 8
Adequate protein and fluid intake supports local healing of a wound.
Correct Answer
True
True. Repairing tissue during the local response to injury requires nutrients, especially protein, and enough fluid; nurses also use cold packs, pressure, and elevation to control swelling.
Category: Physiologic Stress Response
Question 9
Calmly reorienting a frightened patient with acute confusion can reduce sympathetic activation.
Correct Answer
True
True. The brain can trigger the fight-flight-freeze response to a perceived threat even when the threat is not real, so calmly reorienting a patient with acute confusion, such as delirium, helps lower that response. For a person with dementia, gentle redirection is often preferred over repeated correction.
Category: Stress Management Care
Question 10
Asking a patient how a coping strategy is working for them helps evaluate whether it is effective.
Correct Answer
True
True. The nurse helps patients identify and test coping strategies and then evaluates the results with them, adjusting the plan if the outcomes are negative.
Category: Coping and Appraisal
Question 11
Every person exposed to the same stressor has the same stress response.
Correct Answer
False
False. Responses vary widely with age, culture, past experience, support, resources, and the person's own appraisal of the event, which is why the nurse individualizes assessment.
Category: Coping and Appraisal
Question 12
Home remedies and herbal products do not need to be recorded during medication reconciliation.
Correct Answer
False
False. The nurse asks nonjudgmentally about home remedies and herbal products and records them, because some can interfere with care; for example, several herbs are stopped before surgery because they raise bleeding risk.
Category: Stress Management Care
Question 13
Chronic stress improves cognitive function over time.
Correct Answer
False
False. A brief alarm response can sharpen thinking, but chronic stress can contribute to poor concentration and impaired memory and reasoning.
Category: Recognizing Stress
Question 14
The fight-flight-freeze response is well suited to coping with chronic stress.
Correct Answer
False
False. The fight-flight-freeze response helps with an acute threat, but when it stays active during chronic stress it wears the body down, contributing to problems such as hyperglycemia, lowered immunity, and fatigue.
Category: Physiologic Stress Response
Question 15
Meditation and calm breathing cannot change a person's heart rate or blood pressure.
Correct Answer
False
False. Some people can consciously lower their heart rate and blood pressure through meditation or calm breathing, which is why nurses teach and model these techniques.
Category: Stress Management Care
Question 16
Inflammation caused by a stressor stays local in every case and cannot become systemic.
Correct Answer
False
False. Inflammation is usually local, but with widespread infection or major trauma it can become systemic, as in systemic inflammatory response syndrome, which can be fatal.
Category: Physiologic Stress Response
Question 17
Stress-related disease develops when the stress response succeeds in restoring homeostasis.
Correct Answer
False
False. Disease develops when the stress response fails to restore homeostasis; when the body recovers and adapts, the stressor does not lead to disease.
Category: Adaptation Models
Question 18
Psychological stress rarely produces findings that a nurse can detect on a head-to-toe assessment.
Correct Answer
False
False. Psychological stress commonly causes physical findings such as headaches, muscle aches, high blood pressure, sweating, sleep problems, and changes in appetite and weight.
Category: Recognizing Stress
Question 19
Nurses are expected to serve as marriage and family counselors for families under stress.
Correct Answer
False
False. Nurses may act as mediators who listen, offer support, and direct families to resources, but they are not expected to provide marriage and family counseling; they refer families to professionals.
Category: Family Health
Question 20
Maladaptive coping behaviors give no short-term relief from distress.
Correct Answer
False
False. Maladaptive behaviors such as heavy drinking or smoking often bring brief relief, which is why they persist, but they mask the problem and add new harm.
Category: Coping and Appraisal