You are the nurse caring for a 51-year-old man who has just been told in a family meeting that he has stage IV colon cancer

Question

You expect that the patient now has an increase in blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate. You spend time talking with this patient and his vital signs become closer to normal range. To what would you attribute this phenomenon?
A) Cortisol levels are decreasing.
B) Endocrine activity has increased.
C) The patient is adapting to noxious stressors.
D) The sympathetic response has been activated.

Answer 1

Ans: C
Feedback:
Selye developed a theory of adaptation to biologic stress that he named the general adaptation syndrome (GAS), which has three phases: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. During the alarm phase, the sympathetic "fight-or-flight" response is activated with release of catecholamines and the onset of the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) – adrenal cortical response. The alarm reaction is defensive and anti-inflammatory but self-limited. Because living in a continuous state of alarm would result in death, people move into the second stage, resistance. During the resistance stage, adaptation to the noxious stressor occurs, and cortisol activity is still increased. If exposure to the stressor is prolonged, the third stage, exhaustion, occurs. During the exhaustion stage, endocrine activity increases, and this has negative effects on the body systems (especially the circulatory, digestive, and immune systems) that can lead to death.