03.04 Same

Alright, the next strategy I wanna talk about is something called Same. What this refers to is when you see 2 answer options that are essentially saying the same thing, you need to move on because both can’t be correct, right? You can’t have two answer options that are correct when you’re dealing with just the black and white, which one is the right answer? Okay, you simply can’t have that. So, what you really need to so is you need to move on. Now, this can be really hard to spot sometimes. That’s kind of the difficulty with this strategy right here. With this one, is that spotting 2 answer options that are essentially saying the same thing is what makes this difficult. Now, it can be 1 answer or 2 answer options saying the same thing or 3 answer options saying the same thing and really be able to spot that and try to identify that. It can be really hard. Let me give you an example. If you’re talking about a patient who has pain or something like that or which patient you should see first? And one answer option says a patient who has a pain rating at 8, and another option is a patient stating they have really bad pain. Okay, that’s really kind of the same thing. So, looking at that, they both can’t be right. So, they both have to be wrong, right? You have to select one right answer, so both can’t be right, therefore, they both have to be wrong. So, it’s kinda just basic logic there, right? They are both equally possible but they’re both then equally wrong. Alright, so what I want you to do is just really really think about this as you’re going through and this is really a quick easy strategy if you recognize it to help take your chance to getting a question right from 25% to 50%. Okay, ‘cause you can just very quickly eliminate 2 or possibly even 3 answer options.

So, let’s look at an example of this. What is the main reason why passive range-of-motion (PROM) exercises are performed? 1. Increased endurance. 2. Prevent loss of mobility. 3. Strengthen muscle tone. 4. Maximize muscle atrophy. What I want you to do is look what’s the same in these answer options? What’s really the same? Okay, if you look at options 1, 3 and 4, they’re all talking about increasing something. Increase, strengthen and maximize. So, they are all talking about doing something more. Where option 2 is prevent. It’s different than increase, it’s the opposite of strengthen, it’s the opposite of maximize, so, it’s really the one option that is not talking about increasing something. Okay, this can be a tricky strategy because you’re really relying on simple words or simple similarities. So, I really want you to use some nursing logic as you’re doing this too. But, this is kind of a last titch of effort really here. So, what we have here is one is increased endurance, okay, 3 is strengthen muscle tone, 4 is maximizing muscle atrophy. So, if you’re not aware that atrophy is not something that you’d want to maximize, you can still see that the word maximize is similar to strengthen or increased. Therefore, you could really go with 2, prevent loss of mobility. And that is the reason that we do passive range-of-motion exercises, that’s the whole purpose of it.

So, again, guys, this can be one that you could get yourself into trouble with this. A better example, you know, would be in the case of a patient stating that they have really severe pain, patient stating they have a pain of 8, those are 2 very obviously similar answer options. Those ones are very obviously stating the exact same thing. If you have one that says a sodium of 150 and one answer option that’s saying hypernatremia, okay, those are obviously saying the same thing. They both can’t be right. Just because they’re saying it slightly different, does not make it a different answer option. Okay, so, this can be risky, you can get yourself kind of caught in the trap here. However, you have to realize what I’ve really want you to take away from this is that you have to realize that 2 answer options or 3 answer options that are saying the same things or similar things cannot all be right. Okay, if one is right, that means the other is not the right answer. And if they’re saying the same thing, that can’t be. So, rather than really applying this as a strategy to every test question you take, I want you to keep that in mind. Because you are gonna see a lot of question options that are really like “Men, that’s the exact same thing.” And think of this, if it is saying the exact same thing, move on. Okay, it cannot be right. And this option here is saying increase, strengthen, maximize, that’s the words that’s saying the same thing. Which one is not increasing something, to prevent, boom, we go with that. Okay, that’s a little bit more out there as an example but in the case of like hyponatremia, sodium 155, boom, that’s very clearly the same thing, pain of 8, severe pain, kinda the same thing, move on. Alright guys, so that strategy is same. What I want you to take in mind is you can’t have 2 of the same options be right. Okay, they both have to be wrong, alright. Hope that one helps guys.