03.07 Acute vs Chronic

So, another testing strategy, and this one’s is not so much a strategy, as more kinda like a heads up, like a warning sign, like I wanna give you guys this as a cautionary advice and I wanna make sure you understand that you’re gonna see this and kinda how to recognize these types of questions. This comes down to acute versus chronic. You’re gonna get a lot of these questions because they’re gonna wanna understand can you tell the difference between acute and chronic? And now, when this comes into play, guys, what you need to understand more than anything is that ‘Content is King.’ Okay, and they just really wanna know, can you identify the difference between acute symptoms and chronic symptoms. And what would generally happen guys, is if you get a question that’s asking about acute renal failure, one of the options will likely be chronic renal failure. So, if it’s like what are the symptoms of acute renal failure? Select all that applied. One or a couple of the options are going to be about chronic renal failure. Okay, so, it’s really important that you understand how to kind of identify these things, identify which one is going to indicate chronic or which one is going to indicate acute. And you gotta limit all this chronic ones, okay. So, this isn’t so much a tip, because, right, I can’t just tell you then you can go and apply this to every question and just eliminate everything that’s not acute or that’s not chronic. What I want you to do is I want you to focus your studies on identifying symptoms. Okay, and now you can’t, you know, that might seem intimidating. You can’t learn all symptoms. You can’t learn all acute and all chronic symptoms. But like we talk, you know, cirrhosis, you know, or, liver failure, you know, we can, we know there’s several phases of liver failure, there’s several phases of renal failure. And so, it’s just really important that you identify the key attributes of those. What are the main cardiovascular, neuro, respiratory changes? So, I want you to focus on those 3 systems. What are the main cardiovasular, respiratory and neurological changes? And then, what are any kind of odd changes? You know, what’s some odd change you’re gonna see, like, with Cushing’s, you’re gonna see buffalo hump, you know, that’s odd, that’s different. That’s something you’re not gonna see with other things. You’re gonna see, you know, the bulging eyes. And so, really identifying those very key differences when you’re studying acute versus chronic symptoms and then also focusing on the major body systems, okay. So, tachycardia versus bradycardia, and really, identifying which one is acute, which one is chronic for all these disease symptoms. So, as you’re going to your peds, as you’re going through your cardiac, as you’re going through your mental health, any system, I really want you to focus on learning acute versus chronic symptoms and understanding that you can’t learn them all. And so, that’s what we really kind of try to incorporate into the courses is how to help you make sense of what you need to know. Okay, why are you gonna see the buffalo hump? You know, why are you gonna have hypernatremia or hyponatremia, etc? Why are you gonna have bradycardia? You know, is it a sympathetic stimulation or is it’s gonna cause this tachycardia and other symptoms, you know. And that’s really what you need to do as you’re studying these things, okay. So, some ways you’re gonna see that guys, you’re gonna see that written for example as like acute versus chronic. What are the acute symptoms? What are the chronic symptoms? You might see that written in short term versus long term. You might see that written as early signs versus late signs. Okay, so, really, as you’re studying, as you’re watching the videos here in the NRSNG academy, as you’re studying, as you’re preparing for a test, take out a sheet of paper and simply write down the middle, Acute, Chronic, Cardiac, Respiratory, Neuro, and then like identifying features. Okay, and just writing out all the signs and symptoms of those bodies, of that disease process in the acute phase, in the chronic phase, and then also what are like key identifying signs or symptoms of that disease process? In the acute phase, in the chronic phase. Alright guys, I really want you to focus on this one. This one, like I said, it’s not really necessarily a testing strategy that you can go take this and like apply to some questions, rather, this is kinda giving you this kind of a study tip, something that’s really gonna help you as you’re focusing on those acute versus chronic signs and symptoms and how to really do it. Alright guys, hope that helps.