10 free AEMT practice questions: AEMT Scope of Practice and Medical Direction

Omit them, since the report records abnormal findings: Students learn that a narrative should be concise and conclude that normal findings are filler. Leaving them out costs you the only evidence that you assessed for them at all, which is the first thing a reviewer asks about.

Record them only if the receiving physician asks for them: Documentation is not written on request. The receiving physician may never ask, and the report still has to stand on its own as the record of what you did, years after the call.

Omit them from the narrative and mark the checkboxes only: This treats the narrative as a place for abnormal findings only, with the negatives parked in a box somewhere else. A pertinent negative belongs where the assessment is described, because its whole job is to show that the assessment happened.

Give the name, since the hospital is the one requesting it: A request from the receiving hospital feels like permission, and it is not. The rule protects the patient from everyone else who can hear the transmission, so who is asking does not change what belongs on the air.

Give the name, since a radio report is part of treatment: A radio report to the receiving hospital genuinely is treatment, and treatment does not require the patient's authorization. What the treatment exception settles is whether you may share the information at all, not which channel you may broadcast it over.

Give the name after confirming the channel is not public: Students who hear that the problem is eavesdropping conclude that a private channel fixes it. A field crew has no way to confirm who is monitoring a frequency, and the convention is simply that names stay off the radio.

Report it to the supervisor before flushing the eye: Reporting is required and it is required at once, and it does not come ahead of decontamination. The minutes right after the splash are the minutes when flushing still removes material, and a phone call spends exactly those minutes.

Rinse the eye briefly and finish the transport: A quick rinse feels like enough once the eye stops stinging, and comfort is not the measure. The 20-minute standard exists because contact time decides how much material comes out, and finishing the call first also delays an evaluation that has its own clock.

Wait for the source patient's laboratory results: Waiting on the source patient's results sounds cautious and it spends the window that matters. Prophylaxis decisions run on a clock measured in hours, so evaluation happens promptly rather than after someone else's laboratory work returns.

Contact online medical direction for authorization first: Calling feels like the safe move, since a physician's voice sounds more authoritative than a page in a protocol book. Offline direction and online direction are both medical direction, and a standing order is the physician's decision made in advance for exactly this presentation. Asking permission you already hold is delay rather than caution.

Give epinephrine by slow intravenous push: Hypotension pushes students toward the fastest route they can name. Intravenous epinephrine appears in the National EMS Scope of Practice Model under a footnote, which makes it protocol-gated rather than a national AEMT privilege, and the national-level answer names the intramuscular route.

Start an isotonic crystalloid bolus and reassess: This is the right intervention in the wrong order. An isotonic crystalloid bolus is how you correct hypotension that persists after intramuscular epinephrine and initial airway management, and running fluid first delays the one drug that treats the reaction itself.

Repeat the order back and then intubate the patient: Repeating an order back is the right habit, and it is how you catch a misheard drug or dose. Confirming the words does not change what your certification allows, so an accurately repeated out-of-scope order is still an out-of-scope order.

Intubate while the physician stays on the radio: This is the workaround students reach for when they sense the order is wrong but do not want to refuse a physician. Real-time supervision does not move a skill into your scope, and keeping the physician on the phone during the attempt does not make the procedure permissible.

Intubate and document that a physician ordered it: Documentation feels like it shifts responsibility to whoever gave the order. The record of an out-of-scope procedure documents that the procedure happened, and the provider who performed it is still the provider who performed it.

It transfers unchanged with the AEMT's certification: The National Registry credential travels with the provider, but scope of practice does not. The new state's licensing authority and medical director define what may be performed there.

It is set nationally by NHTSA and is the same everywhere: The National EMS Scope of Practice Model is a consensus guide, not law. Nothing in it takes effect until the state licensing authority and medical director adopt it, which is exactly why scope differs between states.

It is defined by the National Registry certification held: National Registry certification verifies competency; it does not grant practice authority. Scope comes from the state license and the medical director's authorization.

Edit the original narrative to include the dose given: Editing the narrative directly is exactly right before the report is submitted. An unfinished report is a working document and corrections belong in the text. After submission the same edit destroys the record's integrity: there is no longer any way to show what was known at handoff versus added later, and a silent change to a submitted legal document is hard to distinguish from falsification if it is ever questioned. The key makes the identical clinical correction while leaving that history visible.

Notify the receiving nurse, and take no further step: Telling the receiving nurse is a genuinely necessary step and should happen. The care team needs to know naloxone was given, and a phone call gets that information there faster than any paperwork will. It is not a substitute for correcting the record, because a verbal notice is not part of the chart and will not be there when someone reviews the case next week. The key is not an alternative to calling; it is the part that makes the correction permanent.

Record the dose only on the unit restock form: The restock form does a real job: it accounts for medication inventory and, for controlled substances, the chain of custody. It is not the patient's medical record, and no clinician treating this patient will ever read it, so a dose recorded only there is invisible exactly where it matters clinically. The key puts the administration into the document the receiving facility and any later reviewer actually use.

Only the successful attempt, unless a complication occurred: This is close to how a lot of people actually chart, and the trailing clause shows the instinct is half right, because complications genuinely do have to be documented. The trap is treating documentation as exception-driven, where a procedure only earns an entry when something goes wrong. A failed stick with no complication still altered the patient, and the fact that nothing went wrong is itself a finding worth recording. The key documents the attempt regardless, while this option documents it only in the situation where the record is least likely to be trusted.

Only the successful attempt and the site used: Site and gauge are a complete entry for the line that worked, and if the question had described a single successful attempt, this would be right. The question specifies two attempts. Charting the successful one is necessary but not sufficient; the key includes everything in this option and adds back the attempt this one deletes.

Only the total volume of fluid that was given: Total volume infused is the headline you would give in a short radio report, where the receiving facility mostly wants to know how much fluid the patient has already received. The question asks specifically about documenting the vascular access. Volume alone does not say where the line is, what gauge it is, or what was done to the patient to get it, so the key captures the procedure and treats volume as one line inside it.

Move the stretcher out of the residence with the crew: Moving the patient out with the crew is right for a scene that is unsafe in an environmental way, meaning fire, a structural hazard, or a deteriorating scene with no active human threat, where taking the patient along is both possible and necessary. It fails here because it is slow: maneuvering a loaded stretcher with an intravenous line through a residence keeps the crew in the room with an armed person for far longer. The key gets the crew out of reach immediately, which is the only thing that makes returning to this patient possible.

Continue care, and ask the family member to step outside: Asking a disruptive family member to step outside is a reasonable and common move when the person is upset but unarmed and care can safely continue. This family member has already made threats and picked up a knife, which is past the point where a request changes anything, and complying with it is entirely at the discretion of the person threatening the crew. The key does not negotiate with an armed person and does not keep the crew in the room while trying.

Speak calmly to the family member to de-escalate the threat: Verbal de-escalation is a genuine and effective skill, and it is the correct tool earlier in the escalation, before a weapon appears, when calm speech can still change the trajectory. The weapon is already in hand here, which is exactly where de-escalation stops being an EMS task. The key withdraws first and brings in the people trained and equipped to handle an armed person, rather than gambling that words work while standing within a knife's reach.

Load the patient, and open the rear doors during transport: Opening the doors does not decontaminate anyone. It moves contaminated air around a compartment the crew is riding in, and the patient, the linen, and every surface touched remain contaminated for the rest of the shift.

Load the patient after covering the stretcher with a sheet: A sheet protects the stretcher and nothing else. The patient is still covered in an unidentified powder, the compartment air is still shared, and the crew is still in it.

Start an intravenous line, and treat the burning of the eyes: Puncturing contaminated skin drives the contaminant past the body's own barrier, and it is being done before the exposure has been stopped. Vascular access, when it is needed, waits until decontamination is complete.