10 free AEMT practice questions: Suctioning and Airway Clearance

Insert the oropharyngeal airway and suction around it: An oropharyngeal airway is the right idea for a patient with no gag reflex, and it does make later suctioning easier by holding the tongue forward. What it does not do is remove what is already in there, so you would be seating a device in a pool of fluid and then bagging through it.

Begin BVM ventilation and watch for chest rise: The patient needs oxygen and the bag is right there, which makes this feel like the fastest help you can give. Positive pressure delivered into a mouth full of fluid pushes that fluid toward the lungs, which is the exact injury you are trying to prevent.

Roll the patient onto the side and reassess the sound: Turning a patient to let fluid drain is a real technique and it helps when the volume outruns your suction. It is slower than the catheter already in your hand, and gravity alone will not clear what has already worked its way to the back of the throat.

Suctioning on the way in drives material toward the larynx: Pushing material deeper is a genuine hazard in airway work, and it is exactly what a blind finger sweep does with a solid object. Suction pulls rather than pushes, so a running vacuum on the way in is not what drives fluid toward the cords.

Suctioning on the way in makes the rigid catheter collapse: Collapse under vacuum is a real failure mode, which makes this sound right. It belongs to the soft flexible catheter, not the rigid one, and it is the reason you switch to a rigid tip when material is thick.

Suctioning on the way in makes the measured depth hard to judge: Depth control is worth worrying about, since a tip past the base of the tongue triggers gagging and a vagal response. You control that by measuring against the face beforehand, and the vacuum state does not change how deep the tip sits.

Continue the pass until the oropharynx is finally clear: Finishing the job in one pass is appealing because an airway half cleared still sounds terrible. Every extra second is apnea in a child who has less reserve than an adult, and that is where the saturation and then the heart rate go.

Withdraw the catheter and insert an oropharyngeal airway: An oral airway does belong in this patient eventually, since the vomiting has already shown the airway is undefended. Placing it now seats a device over fluid you have not removed, and it does nothing about the oxygen you just spent.

Switch to a soft catheter and continue the same attempt: A different catheter is a reasonable thought when material is not moving, and switching tools does solve some suctioning problems. A softer catheter handles thick vomit worse, not better, and continuing the same attempt ignores that the clock has already run out.

To the base of the tongue on every pass: The base of the tongue is the landmark your measurement is built around, so it sounds like the right target. That is the depth you avoid in a patient with tone, because it is precisely where the gag reflex lives.

Until the patient coughs, then no further: Waiting for a cough treats the patient as your depth gauge, and a cough does tell you that you have gone too far. By then the airway has already been stimulated, and the next thing it often does is vomit.

To the full depth measured at the earlobe: The measured depth is correct for an unresponsive patient with no gag reflex, which is most of the suctioning you will do. This patient is awake and talking, so the visualized limit governs instead.

At least 30 mmHg of vacuum: 30 is a real number in the specification and it is easy to grab, which is exactly why it appears here. It is the free flow figure in liters per minute, not a vacuum pressure, and a unit pulling 30 mmHg would barely move saliva.

At least 120 mmHg of vacuum: 120 mmHg sits comfortably in the range of numbers you read off monitors all shift, so it feels plausible. It has nothing to do with suction, and a unit that stalls there will not clear thick material.

At least 760 mmHg of vacuum: 760 mmHg is a figure worth recognizing, since it is atmospheric pressure at sea level. A portable unit is not built to pull a full vacuum, and the published threshold is 300.

Shorten the attempt to 10 seconds to match the reduced reserve: Trimming the clock looks like a direct way to protect a patient with less reserve, and the instinct behind it is sound. The limits are set by age, not by reserve, and cutting your own working time means more passes and more total apnea rather than less.

Turn the vacuum down so less oxygen is pulled from the airway: Lowering the pull sounds gentler, and gentleness is often right in airway work. Vacuum is not the variable at any age, and a weaker pull on pooled vomit just keeps the catheter in longer.

Extend the head further back to open a straighter path: Opening the airway before you work in it is a real step, and head position does matter. Extending further than neutral does not add reserve, and in a pregnant patient the pooled vomit is the problem you have not addressed yet.

Insert an oropharyngeal airway to hold the vomit off the tongue: An oral airway belongs in a patient with no gag reflex and it does make repeat suctioning easier. Placing it into a mouth that is currently full seats a device in the fluid, and it moves nothing out.

Resume ventilation with smaller breaths delivered more slowly: Smaller, slower breaths are the correct fix for the distention that caused this, so the reasoning is half right. Delivering any breath through vomit drives it toward the lungs, so the correction waits until the mouth is clear.

Place a supraglottic airway to seal the airway below the vomit: Sealing the airway off from contamination is an appealing idea, and this device does seal the hypopharynx. It never isolates the trachea from the esophagus, so a device dropped into vomit traps the fluid below the cuff where positive pressure pushes it down.

Suction the trachea before any ventilation is attempted: This was taught for years and it still feels like the responsible move when the fluid is that thick. It is no longer performed at any level of vigor, and it delays the ventilation that a limp newborn actually needs.

Clear the mouth and nose with a bulb syringe before drying: Bulb suctioning is the right tool for a newborn and the mouth before the nose is the right order, so this is close to correct practice. Routine suctioning is no longer taught, and it belongs here only if secretions are actually obstructing the airway.

Begin chest compressions and reassess the heart rate at 30 seconds: Compressions feel urgent for a limp newborn, and there is a point in the sequence where they are correct. Compressions follow 30 seconds of effective ventilation with a heart rate still under 60, so ventilation comes first.

Suction the oropharynx first, since the sound comes from the airway: Suction is the right reflex for a noisy airway often enough that it becomes automatic. The noise here is snoring rather than gurgling and there is no visible fluid, so the catheter has nothing to remove and the pass costs oxygen for nothing.

Advance a rigid catheter to the base of the tongue and suction there: Going to the base of the tongue at least aims at the structure making the noise, which is closer to the mechanism than most wrong answers get. A catheter does not hold a tongue forward, and touching that tissue provokes gagging and a vagal response.

Place the patient on the side and suction any fluid that drains: The lateral position is genuinely protective for a patient who cannot guard the airway, so this is not a bad habit. It does not lift the tongue off the posterior pharynx, and the immediate problem here is obstruction rather than drainage.

Suction the mouth first, then leave the cannula where it is set: Getting the sputum out matters and it is why you came to the mouth in the first place, so leading with suction has real appeal. It starts an apneic pass in a patient already at 84 percent, and leaving a cannula at 2 L afterward keeps the hypoxia you just deepened.

Leave the cannula at 2 L, since the saturation is near the target: This is the closest call in the set, because titration toward a band is genuinely correct for these patients. The band is 88 to 92 percent and this patient is at 84, so the rule being invoked actually calls for more oxygen.

Suction in passes of 5 seconds to keep the apneic time short: Shortening the apneic time is thinking about the right hazard, and short passes are good practice. 5 seconds is the infant ceiling rather than the adult one, and trimming the clock does not replace the oxygen that should have gone in first.