10 free AEMT practice questions: Burns, Musculoskeletal, and Special Trauma Populations

Assign the whole anterior trunk as eighteen percent because the patches all sit on it: The patches sit on the anterior trunk, which the rule of nines assigns eighteen percent. The patches are scattered and small, not a confluent burn covering that whole region, so charging the full eighteen percent overestimates total body surface area and skews the fluid resuscitation plan.

Count the blisters and allow one percent of surface area for every ten of them: Counting blisters feels objective since blisters are countable, but blister count has no fixed relationship to surface area: one blister can cover a whole hand while ten fit on a thumb. This invents a formula standard burn assessment does not use.

Use the AEMT's own palm and fingers, which is the standard reference surface: Any adult palm approximates one percent of that same person's own surface area, so using your own hand looks like the rule of palm in action. The proportion only holds when the hand belongs to the body being measured: swap in the AEMT's hand and every patch skews by the size difference between provider and patient, throwing off fluid calculation.

Eighteen percent, using the adult head value of nine percent: The adult chart is the one most people have memorized, and nine percent for a head is the number that comes first. A child's head carries a much larger share of the surface area, and using nine here loses half of the burn.

Thirty six percent, counting the head and the arm as eighteen percent each: Doubling both regions looks like it respects the pediatric adjustment. Only the head and the legs shift in a child, since an arm is nine percent at every age.

Twenty two percent, averaging the adult and the pediatric head values: Splitting the difference between two charts feels safe when you are unsure which applies. The pediatric proportions are a fixed set of values rather than a range, and averaging produces a number that matches no patient.

In a vein of the lower leg, distal to the circumferential thigh burn: The lower leg is untouched by the fire, so it looks like clean unburned skin. Everything below an encircling thigh burn is downstream of tissue that is about to swell, and a line placed there is the one most likely to fail during transport.

Through the burned skin of the thigh, where the vein is largest and easiest: Burned skin can look deceptively easy to cannulate when the vein stands out beneath it. Going through burned tissue invites infection into an injury already at high risk for it, and the swelling underneath moves the vein away from the catheter.

In the external jugular vein, since both lower extremities are involved: Reaching past the arms feels resourceful when the legs are out of play. It is not needed when two entirely unburned arms are available, and a peripheral line in spared skin is both faster and lower risk.

The two breathing patients, since a pulseless patient is triaged expectant: This is correct triage at almost every other multiple-patient scene, which is precisely what makes it the trap. Lightning is the named exception, and applying the general rule here abandons the only patient whose outcome you can still change.

Whichever patient has the most visible burns, since those mark the strike: Visible burns look like a measure of how much energy a patient absorbed, so sorting by them feels objective. Lightning injuries are often superficial on the skin while the damage that kills is electrical and internal, so burn appearance is a poor guide to priority.

The apneic patient, once the two breathing patients are off the course: Clearing the walking patients first feels organized and gets bodies out of the weather. Minutes matter enormously in a reversible arrest and not at all to a patient with a strong radial pulse, so this ordering spends the wrong resource first.

Apply the traction splint, since the femur is the greater threat to life: The femur genuinely is the more dangerous of the two injuries, and prioritizing it sounds like good triage. Traction here transmits the entire pull through a fractured ankle, so treating the bigger injury this way creates a second one.

Apply the traction splint with a gently reduced pull to protect the injured ankle: Dialing the force down feels like a reasonable compromise between two real concerns. A contraindication is not a dose question, and any traction at all still loads the injured ankle that the device anchors against.

Splint the ankle separately first, then apply the traction splint as usual: Sequencing the care looks methodical and splinting the ankle first sounds protective. Splinting does not remove the injury, and the traction splint still pulls against that ankle no matter what is wrapped around it.

Splint the leg exactly as found, since repositioning can worsen the injury: Splinting exactly as found is the standard rule for an angulated fracture, because moving fragments increases bleeding and pain. That rule assumes a pulse is present. Here the foot is pale, cool, and pulseless at both the ankle and the dorsum, the exception that calls for one realignment attempt before splinting, so following the general rule here costs the limb its circulation.

Repeat realignment attempts until a pulse returns at the ankle or the foot: Repeated realignment sounds like persistence working in the patient's favor, since one attempt at restoring the pulse suggests more attempts might do it too. Each additional pass through the fracture site tears more soft tissue and vessel wall without reliably improving perfusion, so the protocol caps the maneuver at one gentle attempt, then splint and transport.

Apply a traction splint to restore length and straighten the foot that way: A traction splint is the right tool for a shortened, angulated femur shaft fracture, where steady traction restores length and stabilizes the limb. This injury sits below the knee, and the device anchors against the ankle and foot, the same segment that has already lost its pulse, making it contraindicated here.

Hold the fluid until the limb is free so that none of the volume is wasted: Waiting until the injury is accessible fits the way most trauma care is sequenced, and nothing looks wrong with this patient yet. The whole point of the fluid is to be circulating before the load arrives, so giving it afterward misses the event it was meant to blunt.

Give fluid in small increments only if the blood pressure starts to drop: Titrating fluid to blood pressure is correct in most bleeding patients and sounds appropriately measured. In crush syndrome the pressure falls because of a potassium and acid surge rather than volume loss, and by then the arrhythmia is already in progress.

Concentrate on splinting the leg so it is ready the moment it comes free: Preparing for the extrication is genuinely useful work and splinting will be needed. Splinting changes nothing about the metabolic load that the lift will release, and it is the only one of these choices that leaves the patient without a line when the tractor comes up.

Treat it as a sprain, since there is no deformity and little swelling: Absent deformity and minimal swelling is exactly how most sprains present, so the label fits the picture at first glance. Children sprain far less often than adults do, because the growth plate fails before the ligament does.

Have the patient walk on it to see whether the pain is mechanical: Weight bearing is a reasonable functional test in an adult ankle and it feels like useful information. Walking on a growth plate injury can displace it, and a child can often bear weight on a real fracture anyway.

Wrap it with an elastic bandage and let the family drive to the clinic: Compression and a clinic visit is a common and often adequate plan for a minor ankle injury. It leaves an unsplinted fracture being moved by whoever carries the child to the car, and it delays the imaging that decides the treatment.

As reassurance that the blood loss so far has been fairly minor: A number inside the normal range is designed to be reassuring, and that is the whole trap. Pressure is the last thing a child gives up, so a normal reading tells you the compensation is still working rather than that the loss is small.

As a normal reading, since children run lower pressures than adults do: Children genuinely do run different vital sign ranges, which gives this a ring of truth. Calling this pressure normal skips over the skin, the refill time, and the rate, all of which say the child is paying dearly to keep it there.

As evidence that the fast rate comes from pain rather than from bleeding: Pain really does drive heart rate up and a deformed forearm certainly hurts. Pain does not make the skin pale and cool or stretch capillary refill to three seconds, and abdominal tenderness after a ten foot fall names a likelier source.

Record the mechanism as a simple trip and treat the injured wrist alone: Writing the obvious mechanism is fast and it matches what the scene looks like. A trip is something the patient usually remembers, and recording one that nobody witnessed closes the door on the question that actually matters.

Attribute the memory gap to age and concentrate fully on the injury: Some memory loss is genuinely common with age and families will often offer this explanation for you. A new gap covering exactly the moments around a fall is a finding rather than a baseline, and treating it as normal loses a syncopal episode.

Hold further assessment until the wrist is splinted, iced, and elevated: Finishing one task before starting the next feels organized and the wrist is the visible problem. The medical cause is the part of this call that can still kill the patient, and it does not wait for the splinting to be done.