A nurse in an acute care facility is caring for a toddler.

Exhibits

For each assessment finding below, click to specify if the assessment finding is consistent with Crohn's disease, appendicitis, or intussusception. Each finding may support more than 1 disease process.

• Panic disorder: Typically presents with intense fear, chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a sense of doom. It is episodic, not sustained like mania, and does not include symptoms like euphoria, grandiosity, or hallucinations.
• Catatonia: Involves motor immobility, stupor, rigidity, or excessive purposeless movement. While this client is very active, their activity is goal-directed but disorganized, consistent with mania, not catatonia.
• Mania: Characterized by euphoric or irritable mood, increased energy, racing thoughts, pressured speech, poor judgment, impulsivity, and decreased need for sleep. The client displays grandiosity, impulsive spending, hyperactivity, pressured speech, insomnia, and hallucinations, all pointing to mania.
• Major depressive disorder: Involves symptoms like anhedonia, depressed mood, fatigue, and decreased energy. This is inconsistent with the client's overactivity and euphoric behavior.
• Delirium: Usually presents with acute confusion, fluctuating consciousness, and disorientation, often due to a medical condition or substance use. This client is consistently manic and does not show signs of fluctuating alertness or disorientation to time and person.
• Anhedonia: Inability to feel pleasure, commonly seen in depression, not in mania.
• Alogia: Poverty of speech or reduced speech output, often associated with schizophrenia, not consistent with this client’s pressured and loud speech.
• Magical thinking: Believing that one's thoughts can influence reality, often seen in schizotypal personality disorder, not prominent here.
• Euphoric mood: A classic symptom of mania, where the individual may feel overly joyful, energetic, and invincible, as reflected in the client's excessive confidence, impulsivity, and erratic behavior.
• Hypervigilance: Commonly linked with anxiety disorders or PTSD, and not the most fitting descriptor for this client’s presentation.

A. Bulging anterior fontanel. A bulging fontanel is associated with increased intracranial pressure, not dehydration. Dehydration is more likely to cause a sunken fontanel.
B. Decreased temperature. Dehydrated infants typically exhibit normal or elevated temperatures, especially if they have an underlying infection or fever. A decreased temperature is not a common sign of dehydration.
C. Hypertension. Dehydration more commonly leads to hypotension or normal blood pressure, depending on severity. Hypertension is not an expected finding in an infant with fluid volume loss.
D. Oliguria. Decreased urine output (oliguria) is a classic and expected sign of dehydration in infants. It indicates the kidneys are conserving fluid due to inadequate intake and fluid loss from vomiting and diarrhea.