A client who had a wrist cast applied 3 days ago for a fractured wrist calls from home, reporting that the cast is loose enough to slide off. What should be the nurse's response?
A. "Keeping your arm above the level of your heart will help keep the cast in the correct position."
B. "As your muscles atrophy and get smaller, the cast is expected to loosen."
C. "Wrap an elastic bandage around the cast to prevent it from slipping."
D. "Your cast needs to be reapplied now that the wrist swelling is down."
D
Many times, especially with a wrist fracture, the surrounding soft tissues may be swollen consi-derably when the cast is initially applied. After the swelling has resolved, if the cast is loose enough to permit two or more fingers between the cast and the client's skin, the cast needs to be replaced.
You might also like to view...
A woman at 30 weeks' gestation is 80% effaced and 5 cm dilated. Which action by the nurse takes priority?
A. Arrange a palliative care consult for probable fetal demise. B. Encourage the woman to attempt a trial of labor before undergoing a cesarean section. C. Ensure that informed consent for a cesarean birth is on the chart. D. Inform the woman that if the tocolytic therapy is successful, she will deliver.
The building blocks of DNA include:
1. Sugar, phosphate, and four nucleotide bases. 2. Adenosine, cytosine, glucosamine, and thymine. 3. Purine sugars and pyrimidine phosphate. 4. Chromosomes with mRNA proteins.
The nurse is assessing an infant who is 10 months old to determine if the infant is in Piaget's fourth substage of sensorimotor development called coordination of secondary schema
Which of the following actions would indicate to the nurse that the infant is indeed in this fourth substage? a. banging a toy to produce a sound b. looking and grasping for a favorite toy c. putting blocks of different shapes into a container with matching holes of varied shapes d. putting objects and substances into the mouth and spitting out those that taste bad
A 30-year-old woman is being treated for polycythemia vera and she wants to know about the properties of blood. The nurse identifies which properties of blood that differentiate it from other connective tissues?
A) Cells are heavier and more viscous than water. B) Despite being a liquid, it possesses an adhesive quality. C) Cells are not fixed, but move freely in the liquid portion. D) Although the composition is the same, the protein content is lower.