NR 503 EPIDEMIOLOGY UPDATED EXAM
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SURE A+
✔✔Study Methods - ✔✔descriptive and analytic
✔✔descriptive study - ✔✔describes person place and time. Provided data for program
planning, resource planning, and generates a hypothesis. Types include correlational
studies, case reports and studies, and cross-sectional studies.
✔✔analytic study - ✔✔consists of observational and experimental. Observational
include case control and cohort. Experimental includes random control trial (typically for
new drug testing), field trial (conducted on those who have a high risk of obtained a
disease), and community trial (research is conducted on an entire community or
neighborhood). Test a hypothesis.
✔✔Rapid Cycle Improvement (RCI) - ✔✔1. "quality improvement method that identifies,
implements and measures changes made to improve a process or a system." it implies
that changes are made and tested over periods of three or months or less, rather than
the standard eight to twelve months. It consists of fours stages:
Plan: Identify an opportunity to improve and plan a change or test of how something
works.
Do: Carry out the plan on a small number of patients. The test period may be as short
as one day for small PDSA cycles.
Study:Examine the results. Did you achieve your goals?
Act: Use your results to make a decision, incorporate changes into your workflow, and
establish future quality improvement plans
✔✔Is screening a tertiary intervention? If yes, why, if not, what is it? - ✔✔No, it is
secondary.
✔✔How does a provider determine the usefulness, appropriateness, of a screening
test? Where would and NP look to find a screening test? What determines if a screening
, test should be used? - ✔✔Determining whether a screening test is appropriate requires
the APRN to address several aspects of the disease of interest. The target population
needs to be identifiable. There should be enough people to make the study cost
effective. The preclinical period should be proficient to allow treatment before symptoms
appear so that early diagnosis and treatment make a difference in terms of outcomes.
The NP could look at the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, and SAMHSA-HRSA to find a screening test. Sensitivity and
specificity measure the validity of a test. Sensitivity is the number identified/ the number
affected. Specificity is the number identified in the screening of not having the disease/
the actual number who do not have the disease.
✔✔Can you explain what "descriptive epidemiology" means? What is the purpose? How
is it used? - ✔✔It covers time place and person.
First, by looking at the data carefully, the epidemiologist becomes very familiar with the
data. He or she can see what the data can or cannot reveal based on the variables
available, its limitations (for example, the number of records with missing information for
each important variable), and its eccentricities (for example, all cases range in age from
2 months to 6 years, plus one 17-year-old.).
Second, the epidemiologist learns the extent and pattern of the public health problem
being investigated — which months, which neighborhoods, and which groups of people
have the most and least cases.
Third, the epidemiologist creates a detailed description of the health of a population that
can be easily communicated with tables, graphs, and maps.
Fourth, the epidemiologist can identify areas or groups within the population that have
high rates of disease. This information in turn provides important clues to the causes of
the disease, and these clues can be turned into testable hypotheses.
✔✔How are causation and descriptive epidemiology related, how do they work together
to aid evidence-based care? - ✔✔______________- helps look at the cause of the
issue or disease process. ________ ________ focuses on the person, place, and time.
An example of how they are intertwined might be a person who was sick from E. Coli.
The physician might look at what the individual ate to determine what made them sick.
For instance, they may have decided to eat from the salad bar at a local restaurant.
✔✔What does "causation" mean? Can you relate causation to primary, secondary and
tertiary interventions? - ✔✔is an increase in a casual factor or exposure causes an
increase in the outcome of interest (disease). It is related to primary intervention could
be the use of flu vaccines yearly to prevent the flu from causing an illness. A secondary
intervention would be to test for the influenza virus in a patient. A tertiary intervention
would be giving Tamiflu to a flu positive patient. Since we know that the influenza virus
causes the flu when can help to perform actions against it.
✔✔Are you able to discuss "surveillance" and its relationship to "causation"? - ✔✔is the
ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the
planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice closely integrated
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SURE A+
✔✔Study Methods - ✔✔descriptive and analytic
✔✔descriptive study - ✔✔describes person place and time. Provided data for program
planning, resource planning, and generates a hypothesis. Types include correlational
studies, case reports and studies, and cross-sectional studies.
✔✔analytic study - ✔✔consists of observational and experimental. Observational
include case control and cohort. Experimental includes random control trial (typically for
new drug testing), field trial (conducted on those who have a high risk of obtained a
disease), and community trial (research is conducted on an entire community or
neighborhood). Test a hypothesis.
✔✔Rapid Cycle Improvement (RCI) - ✔✔1. "quality improvement method that identifies,
implements and measures changes made to improve a process or a system." it implies
that changes are made and tested over periods of three or months or less, rather than
the standard eight to twelve months. It consists of fours stages:
Plan: Identify an opportunity to improve and plan a change or test of how something
works.
Do: Carry out the plan on a small number of patients. The test period may be as short
as one day for small PDSA cycles.
Study:Examine the results. Did you achieve your goals?
Act: Use your results to make a decision, incorporate changes into your workflow, and
establish future quality improvement plans
✔✔Is screening a tertiary intervention? If yes, why, if not, what is it? - ✔✔No, it is
secondary.
✔✔How does a provider determine the usefulness, appropriateness, of a screening
test? Where would and NP look to find a screening test? What determines if a screening
, test should be used? - ✔✔Determining whether a screening test is appropriate requires
the APRN to address several aspects of the disease of interest. The target population
needs to be identifiable. There should be enough people to make the study cost
effective. The preclinical period should be proficient to allow treatment before symptoms
appear so that early diagnosis and treatment make a difference in terms of outcomes.
The NP could look at the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, and SAMHSA-HRSA to find a screening test. Sensitivity and
specificity measure the validity of a test. Sensitivity is the number identified/ the number
affected. Specificity is the number identified in the screening of not having the disease/
the actual number who do not have the disease.
✔✔Can you explain what "descriptive epidemiology" means? What is the purpose? How
is it used? - ✔✔It covers time place and person.
First, by looking at the data carefully, the epidemiologist becomes very familiar with the
data. He or she can see what the data can or cannot reveal based on the variables
available, its limitations (for example, the number of records with missing information for
each important variable), and its eccentricities (for example, all cases range in age from
2 months to 6 years, plus one 17-year-old.).
Second, the epidemiologist learns the extent and pattern of the public health problem
being investigated — which months, which neighborhoods, and which groups of people
have the most and least cases.
Third, the epidemiologist creates a detailed description of the health of a population that
can be easily communicated with tables, graphs, and maps.
Fourth, the epidemiologist can identify areas or groups within the population that have
high rates of disease. This information in turn provides important clues to the causes of
the disease, and these clues can be turned into testable hypotheses.
✔✔How are causation and descriptive epidemiology related, how do they work together
to aid evidence-based care? - ✔✔______________- helps look at the cause of the
issue or disease process. ________ ________ focuses on the person, place, and time.
An example of how they are intertwined might be a person who was sick from E. Coli.
The physician might look at what the individual ate to determine what made them sick.
For instance, they may have decided to eat from the salad bar at a local restaurant.
✔✔What does "causation" mean? Can you relate causation to primary, secondary and
tertiary interventions? - ✔✔is an increase in a casual factor or exposure causes an
increase in the outcome of interest (disease). It is related to primary intervention could
be the use of flu vaccines yearly to prevent the flu from causing an illness. A secondary
intervention would be to test for the influenza virus in a patient. A tertiary intervention
would be giving Tamiflu to a flu positive patient. Since we know that the influenza virus
causes the flu when can help to perform actions against it.
✔✔Are you able to discuss "surveillance" and its relationship to "causation"? - ✔✔is the
ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the
planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice closely integrated
