Deck 3: Epidemiology and Nursing Practice

Question 1

A control or "no disease" group is needed for study of oral cancer. The nurses conducting the study decide to use a group of patients with skin cancer because these patients are at the same facility, and the likelihood of developing oral cancer with skin cancer is low. However, this variable could still cause the disease being studied, as well as a potential limitation in the study. This variable would be called a(n):

A)Confounder.
B)Right censoring.
C)Case-control.
D)Odds ratio.

Answer 1

Confounder.

Question 2

The history and development of epidemiology has gone through several developmental phases. The public health nursing student learns that these phases came about in history in what order?

A)Risk factor phase, infectious disease phase, and sanitary phase
B)Infectious disease phase, risk factor phase, and sanitary phase
C)Sanitary phase, infectious disease phase, and risk factor phase
D)Agent phase, host phase, and environment phase

Answer 2

Sanitary phase, infectious disease phase, and risk factor phase

Question 3

A PHN recognizes that which of the following are types of cohort studies? Select all that apply.

A)Prospective
B)Retrospective
C)Historical
D)Longitudinal
E)Statistical

Answer 3

Prospective
Retrospective
Historical
Longitudinal

Question 4

A school nurse sends out a survey to the parents to determine how many children in a certain school have asthma and in addition asks parents if they smoke. This type of study is called a(n):

A)Case-control study.
B)Cross-sectional study.
C)Cohort study.
D)Outbreak investigation.

Question 5

A PHN is looking into the high rate of diabetes in the community. The nurse knows that there are three categories of risk factors in the field of epidemiology to be considered in the investigation. These categories include all of the following except:

A)Prevalence.
B)Behavioral.
C)Environmental.
D)Genetic.

Question 6

The PHN understands that non-communicable chronic diseases have replaced communicable diseases as the major disease classification in high-income countries mainly because:

A)The mortality rate from communicable disease has declined.
B)Increased income.
C)Higher life expectancy.
D)Increased globalization.

Question 7

A nurse is giving a lecture on communicable diseases and stresses the importance of effective surveillance of disease and illness. She stresses that the most important aspect of surveillance is it:

A)Determines the prevalence of disease over time.
B)Focuses on the study of person-related variables or factors.
C)Calculates percent change in a demographic variable.
D)Establishes expected levels of disease and illness in a population.

Question 8

A PHN has a patient with multiple medical issues that have developed over time. The nurse suspects that the issues are due to working in a chemical plant. The plant was monitored carefully, but a direct cause of his illness will be difficult to prove because:

A)Safety records of the plant do not pertain to the health records of the patient.
B)The patient has medical problems that could be caused by lifestyle decisions rather than from working in the plant.
C)Toxic substances often have thresholds below which exposures do not present human health risks but above which can prove to have adverse or fatal consequences.
D)Some toxic substances are difficult to trace in medical tests.

Question 9

A public health official is comparing the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in two counties in Ohio. From an epidemiological perspective these are:

A)Independent rates.
B)Mortality rates.
C)Dependent rates.
D)Morbidity rates.

Question 10

An epidemiologist uses the epidemiological triangle to explain the occurrence of disease by looking at the three main components of the model: the host, the environment, and the agent. The PHN understands that the agent could be one of many types except:

A)Biological and chemical.
B)Nutritive.
C)Physical.
D)Ecological.

Question 11

A nursing instructor is giving a lecture on genetics and genetic testing. The instructor explains that there is a lot of controversy over testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, the tumor suppressing genes that, if mutated, may indicate hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. The arguments against genetic testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2 include all of the following except:

A)The cost of the test is high.
B)The evidence to the effectiveness of the test is limited.
C)The test is difficult to perform.
D)Less than 10% of all breast cancers are genetically based.

Question 12

A public health nurse (PHN) is asked by the hospital administration to find out why there are so many pediatric asthma patients coming to the emergency room (ER) for treatment and to develop a plan to reduce admissions by 10%. The nurse needs to untangle the multiple risk factors involved in order to determine what type of intervention should be developed. Which framework should the PHN most likely use to understand the multiple factors contributing to asthma in this population?

A)The epidemiological triangle
B)The ecological model
C)The epidemiological constants
D)The web of causation

Question 13

A family does preconception testing using genetic markers for early identification of cerebral palsy to make childbearing decisions. The PHN recognizes that this area of study is called:

A)The Human Genome Project
B)Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
C)Ecological epidemiology
D)Genomics

Question 14

A nursing student learns that an outbreak investigation could be used in which of the following situations? Select all that apply.

A)High numbers of throat cancer
B)Elevated number of gastroenteritis illness at a community daycare
C)Foodborne illnesses resulting from salmonella at a restaurant
D)Employees with elevated levels of asbestosis
E)A community with an unexpectedly high number of infants with elevated blood lead levels
F)None of above

Question 15

When comparing the body mass index (BMI) of obese women in two cities, it would be an erroneous assumption for the nurse to think that, based on these averages, since the average BMI of City A was higher than that of City B, a woman in City A will have a higher BMI than a woman in City B. This assumption is referred to as:

A)An odds ratio.
B)An ecological fallacy.
C)A causality.
D)A relative risk.

Question 16

The public health nursing student is studying outbreak investigations and disease trends. The student learns that there are three precipitating factors also known as the epidemiological constants essential to an outbreak investigation and include which of the following?

A)Person, agent, and time
B)Host, agent, and time
C)Person, place, and environment
D)Person, place, and time

Question 17

John Snow, considered the founder of epidemiology, realized the source of the London's cholera epidemic through:

A)Developing a frequency distribution of deaths.
B)Mapping of the food supply.
C)Interviewing the families of the sick.
D)Performing autopsies.

Question 18

If a nurse takes the number of new cases of a disease or illness among the contacts of initial (primary) cases and divides it by the number of people in the population at risk and multiplies it by a given multiplier, he or she is calculating the:

A)Prevalence.
B)Incidence.
C)Secondary attack rate.
D)Attack rate.