10 free AEMT practice questions: Cardiac Arrest Management and Post-Resuscitation Care

Slow the rate to about 80 per minute so the chest has time to rise: It treats recoil as a timing problem, and slowing down does give the chest longer. The chest is not short of time here, it is being held down by the weight of the hands, and dropping below 100 per minute costs flow without fixing that.

Compress to about 3 inches so each stroke does more work: More depth sounds like more output, and depth is genuinely the strongest single factor. Adding depth on top of leaning fills a heart that never got to refill, and it pushes past the 2.4 inch ceiling as well.

Pause for two seconds after every ten compressions to let the chest refill: It correctly identifies refilling as the problem. Building pauses into the cycle throws away the perfusion pressure the compressions just created, and recoil is supposed to happen inside each compression rather than in a break between them.

Start compressions in the back and keep driving: Compressions given in a moving ambulance are the ones that look like compressions without doing the work. You cannot get over the chest, the depth falls off fast, and you are unbelted over a patient at road speed. The few seconds it takes to stop the truck pay for every compression after them.

Drive faster, since the hospital is minutes away: Speed feels like the answer when the hospital is close, and it treats nothing. What this patient needs is compressions and a rhythm analysis, both of which are already in the back of this ambulance and both of which have to start now rather than at the ambulance bay.

Pull over and wait for the ALS unit: Waiting is the one thing that never helps a patient in arrest. Compressions and the automated external defibrillator are already here and already in your scope, and the call for ALS goes out alongside the resuscitation rather than in place of it.

30 compressions to 2 breaths: This is the right ratio for this patient with a single rescuer, and it is the number most providers say first because it is the adult answer. A second rescuer changes it for a child, since pediatric arrest usually starts as a breathing problem and more frequent breaths matter more here than they do in an adult.

10 compressions to 2 breaths: It sits between the two real ratios and looks like a reasonable middle for a school age patient. It is not a ratio used at any age, and inventing one costs compressions without adding ventilation.

Continuous compressions with 1 breath every 3 seconds: This is genuinely correct for a child once an advanced airway is in place, and the breath interval quoted is right for that situation. With a mask on the face the crew still has to stop compressions to get the seal, so the cycling stays.

It washes carbon dioxide out faster than the compressions can deliver it: The physiology is real, and a low end-tidal number in a hyperventilated patient is something you will actually see. The harm is mechanical rather than chemical, and the falling number is a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself.

It tires the provider at the head before the compressor needs relief: Provider fatigue is a genuine concern on a long resuscitation, and squeezing a bag that often is tiring. The patient is harmed within seconds of the first extra breath, long before anyone at the head gets tired.

It drives the oxygen saturation higher than the tissues are able to use: Oxygen in excess does have downsides, and the idea that more is not always better is correct. A patient in arrest is not oversaturated, and the damage here comes from pressure in the chest rather than from oxygen content.

Pediatric attenuated pads, since the patient has not reached adult size: Anything about the size of a child pulls toward the pediatric equipment, and using the gentler option feels safer. The attenuator is used under about 8 years of age or about 25 kilograms, and a patient above that gets too little energy from it to reliably stop the rhythm.

Pediatric attenuated pads for the first analysis and adult pads after that: Escalating energy is a real concept in manual defibrillation, so a staged approach sounds familiar. An AEMT does not select energy at all, and starting under-dosed simply wastes the first and best shock of the resuscitation.

Adult pads trimmed down so they fit the chest without touching: It gets the pad choice right and tries to solve a fit problem at the same time. A pad is never cut, since trimming it changes the conducting surface and the energy that actually reaches the heart.

Hypovolemia, managed with a weight-based non-medicated crystalloid bolus: Volume is one of the causes an AEMT can genuinely fix in the field, and it is high on the list for a child in arrest. Nothing in this history describes fluid loss or bleeding, and fluid does not treat lungs that stopped moving air.

Hypoglycemia, managed with dextrose once vascular access is in place: A low blood sugar is worth checking in any arrested child and it is a cause an AEMT can correct. It is a cause you rule out rather than the one this history points to, and treating it does nothing for a child who arrested from a breathing failure.

Hypothermia, managed with blankets and warm packs to the trunk: Temperature is on the reversible list and a small patient loses heat quickly during a resuscitation. Nothing here describes a cold exposure, and warming is supportive care rather than the fix for what stopped this heart.

Leave the mask at 15 L per minute, since the brain has just been without flow: A brain that just had no perfusion does need oxygen, and generosity feels like the safe error. A saturation already at 100 percent means the blood is fully loaded, so the extra oxygen adds nothing to carry and pushes the patient above the band this phase of care targets.

Remove the supplemental oxygen entirely, since the saturation is 100 percent: It reads the number correctly and reacts to it, which is better than ignoring it. Going from a full mask to nothing is not titration, and a post-arrest patient who drops off the target is harder to bring back than one you stepped down gradually.

Switch to a nasal cannula at 2 L per minute and recheck in 10 minutes: It is a real step down and it moves in the right direction. The jump is too large to be guided by anything, and ten minutes without a look at the saturation is far too long in the first minutes after a pulse returns.

A core temperature, since the patient may have cooled during the resuscitation: Temperature is worth knowing and heat loss during a long resuscitation is real. It rarely changes what an AEMT does in the next few minutes, while a low sugar is both findable and correctable right now.

A pupil measurement in millimeters, since the size predicts the recovery: Pupils get checked on nearly every unresponsive patient and the finding does go in the report. Pupil size minutes after an arrest predicts very little, and nothing an AEMT does changes based on the number.

A capillary refill time at both feet, since it tracks perfusion better than a pressure: Refill is a fast bedside perfusion check and it is genuinely useful in children. In a cold, vasoconstricted adult just after an arrest it is unreliable, and it adds nothing the blood pressure already being rechecked does not cover.

How much oxygen the ventilations are delivering into the alveoli: Capnography sits in the ventilation circuit, so it feels like a ventilation measurement. It measures the carbon dioxide coming back out, and in an arrest the thing limiting that is blood flow rather than the oxygen going in.

How much heart muscle is still able to respond to a shock: The number does carry outcome information, which makes this sound reasonable. It reflects the flow the compressions are generating right now, and it says nothing about whether a rhythm will convert.

How well the supraglottic airway is sealing in the hypopharynx: Capnography does confirm and monitor that device, so this is a genuine use of the same tool. Placement shows up in whether a waveform appears at all, while the value itself is reporting circulation.

Let the device analyze again now that the bleeding has been found: Rechecking the rhythm feels like following the arrest algorithm, and rhythms do change. The advisory was valid and the next analysis belongs at the two minute mark, and nothing about the rhythm is what emptied this patient of blood.

Load the patient and drive, since the bleeding is repaired at the hospital: Definitive surgical care is genuinely at the hospital and transport time matters in trauma. An external bleed that a tourniquet stops in fifteen seconds is one you fix here, and driving with it running means the volume keeps leaving during every minute of the trip.

Hold compressions while the wound is packed and the tourniquet is applied: It takes the bleeding seriously, which is the right instinct on this call. There are enough hands on this scene to do both, and stopping compressions to work on the leg trades the flow you have for a task that did not require the pause.