A nurse caring for a withdrawn, suspicious patient recognizes the development of feelings of anger toward the patient. What is the nurse’s best response to these feelings?
By suppressing their angry feelings
By discussing their feelings of anger with their nurse manager
By expressing their anger openly and directly with the patient
By telling the nurse manager to assign the patient to another nurse
The Correct Answer is B
Choice A reason: Suppressing anger ignores countertransference, which can impair therapeutic neutrality. Anger may stem from patient behaviors linked to dopamine-driven paranoia, but suppression risks unconscious bias affecting care. Addressing feelings through supervision maintains professionalism, making this response less effective for managing emotions.
Choice B reason: Discussing anger with a manager addresses countertransference, a reaction to patient behaviors like suspicion from dopamine dysregulation. This allows reflection, reducing bias and maintaining therapeutic neutrality. It supports professional care by processing emotions, aligning with evidence-based psychiatric nursing practices for managing countertransference.
Choice C reason: Expressing anger directly risks damaging the therapeutic alliance. Suspicion, tied to mesolimbic dopamine excess, may escalate with confrontation, increasing patient anxiety. This approach disregards professional boundaries and neurobiological sensitivities, making it inappropriate for maintaining effective psychiatric care.
Choice D reason: Reassigning the patient avoids addressing countertransference, neglecting professional growth. Suspicion, linked to neurobiological paranoia, requires consistent care. Reassignment disrupts continuity, potentially worsening patient trust and outcomes, making this an ineffective response compared to processing feelings through supervision.
Nursing Test Bank
Naxlex Comprehensive Predictor Exams
Related Questions
Correct Answer is D
Explanation
Choice A reason: Involuntary repetition, or perseveration, involves repeating a single idea, often due to frontal lobe dysfunction in disorders like schizophrenia. Unlike tangential thinking, it fixates on one thought without divergence, making it distinct and incorrect for describing the diffuse, off-point speech of tangentially.
Choice B reason: Lacking logical relationships describes loose associations, not tangential thinking. Loose associations, seen in schizophrenia, reflect disorganized thoughts due to dopamine dysregulation, jumping illogically between ideas. Tangentiality diverges with excessive detail, staying somewhat related but off-point, making this option incorrect.
Choice C reason: Overproductive speech with tenuous links describes flight of ideas, common in mania with elevated dopamine. Unlike tangentiality, it involves rapid topic shifts with loose connections, not excessive detail missing the point. This distinction makes it an incorrect choice for tangential thinking.
Choice D reason: Tangential thinking involves excessive, irrelevant details, failing to return to the original question, often seen in schizophrenia or mania. This reflects disrupted executive function in the prefrontal cortex, impairing focus. The description matches this pattern, making it the correct choice for tangential speech.
Correct Answer is A
Explanation
Choice A reason: Assessing functioning on a continuum reflects the spectrum of mental health, from optimal to severe impairment. Tools like the Global Assessment of Functioning scale quantify symptom severity and social/occupational performance, integrating neurobiological factors like dopamine imbalances in schizophrenia or serotonin deficits in depression, providing a comprehensive evaluation of mental health status.
Choice B reason: Focusing on intellectual and emotional growth is irrelevant for current functioning. Mental disorders like anxiety or psychosis primarily disrupt mood and cognition, not developmental growth. Neurobiological changes, such as reduced prefrontal cortex activity in depression, affect daily performance, not growth rates, making this metric unsuitable for assessing overall mental health functioning.
Choice C reason: Judging by societal conformity ignores individual neurobiological differences. Mental illnesses, like bipolar disorder, involve altered brain activity (e.g., heightened amygdala response), not just nonconformity. This approach risks mislabeling cultural or personality variations as pathology, disregarding scientific evidence of brain-based dysfunction and hindering accurate assessment of mental health status.
Choice D reason: Assessing logical and rational appearance is insufficient, as disorders like schizophrenia can present with intact logic but severe delusions due to dopamine dysregulation. This overlooks emotional and social impairments, critical in mental health assessment, and fails to capture the full spectrum of neurobiological and functional deficits present in psychiatric conditions.
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