15 free questions from the CinnaEMS treatment and transport bank (567 in the app). Tap an answer to check it. The rationale opens right away.
An unresponsive patient started breathing better the moment you opened the airway with a jaw thrust. You should:
Answer: A. Hold that position and keep checking it
The improvement exists only for as long as the maneuver is held, which makes it a state to maintain rather than a task you have finished; letting go returns the tongue to exactly where it was. Repeating a maneuver already in place achieves nothing, and swapping technique for convenience trades the patient's airway for your hands.
A time-critical patient still has an untreated minor wound as you reach the ambulance. That wound should be:
Answer: A. Dressed on the way, once the patient is moving
A minor wound is real care that costs the patient nothing when it happens in a moving vehicle, so it travels; the scene keeps only what has to be finished before the patient can be moved. Doing it at the door delays the transport that is itself the treatment here, and leaving it undone withholds care the patient was owed for no reason other than that it was inconvenient.
Immediately after a traction splint is applied to a femur fracture, your reassessment should confirm that:
Answer: A. Pulse, movement and sensation in the foot are unchanged
The splint sits between the fracture and the foot, so the check is whether the foot is still perfused, moving and feeling after the device went on. Pain usually eases but rarely disappears, and a hitch or a traction setting driven to its limit is how the device injures the ankle it is pulling against.
Holding an oxygen mask a little away from a distressed patient's face rather than strapping it on:
Answer: A. Delivers less, but it delivers something
The delivered concentration falls off quickly with distance and cannot be stated, but some oxygen reaching a patient who will tolerate nothing else beats a perfect device on the floor beside them. Turning the flow up does not restore the concentration a seal would give, and reserving the technique for cooperative patients removes it from exactly the people it exists for.
A patient has a second convulsion without regaining consciousness between them. This should be treated as:
Answer: A. A true emergency requiring airway support and transport
Seizures that repeat without recovery in between stop being self-limiting: the patient cannot ventilate adequately through them, and the longer it runs the harder it is to stop. Treating it as routine, or waiting for a recovery that is not coming, wastes the window in which airway support and transport still help.
The sign that a manual airway maneuver is failing from fatigue rather than from something new is:
Answer: A. The noise returns slowly and clears when you re-seat the grip
Fatigue is gradual, so the airway closes by degrees and answers immediately to a fresh, correctly placed grip — that response is what identifies the cause. A sudden, complete loss of air movement, a rapid desaturation, or an airway filled with vomit are all new problems arriving on top of the maneuver, and each one needs its own answer rather than a firmer hand on the jaw.
The rescue crew warns you the patient will be free of the wreckage within a minute. You should:
Answer: A. Position yourself to support the airway and spine on release
A patient comes free suddenly and often at an awkward angle, so hands are already on the head and the plan for the move is agreed before the last cut. Standing back means the patient is moved without you, and clearing equipment or setting stretcher height are tasks for the minute before this one.
A patient has been entrapped in a wrecked vehicle for over an hour on a cold night. During the extrication you should:
Answer: A. Keep them covered and warm while treatment continues
Someone held still in a cold metal shell loses heat for the whole extrication, and cold worsens both clotting and shock, so blankets and shielding go on while care is delivered through the space you have. Undressing them accelerates the loss, and fluids by mouth risk vomiting in a patient who cannot turn their head.
Your patient deteriorates while you are waiting at the landing zone for the air crew to arrive. You should:
Answer: A. Keep treating, and be prepared to go by ground instead
The reason to fly is time saved, and a patient who is failing now may not have the minutes the aircraft still needs, so treatment continues and the ground option stays live and communicated. Waiting passively spends the advantage, withholding care for the next crew is indefensible, and leaving without telling them strands an aircraft.
A patient with an indwelling urinary catheter is being moved to the stretcher. The drainage bag should be:
Answer: A. Kept below the level of the bladder and off the floor
Urine drains by gravity and must not run back toward the bladder, so the bag stays below the patient and off a contaminated floor, with the tubing free of the rails. Resting it on the abdomen lets urine flow back, clamping stops the drainage entirely, and disconnecting breaks a closed system and invites infection.
You are ventilating an apneic adult with a bag-valve mask. Which finding best indicates the ventilations are adequate?
Answer: A. Visible chest rise with each breath and improving color
Chest rise is the direct evidence air reached the lungs and improving color supports it. Emptying the bag proves only that it was squeezed. Escaping air is a failed seal and a distending abdomen is gastric insufflation — both are technique failures commonly misread as success.
A patient who cannot understand the risk is refusing treatment for an injury that plainly needs it. Your care should:
Answer: A. Go ahead as gently and as minimally as it can
When a patient cannot make the decision, the duty to treat does not disappear — but the treatment is kept to what the emergency requires and given with as little force as will accomplish it. Waiting for an understanding the impairment prevents leaves the injury untreated, restraint planned first escalates a scene, and limiting care to what they permit accepts an invalid refusal.
A patient with a painful burn asks what you can do about the pain. Within a BLS scope you can:
Answer: A. Cover it, keep air off it and position them comfortably
Moving air over exposed burned nerve endings is much of what a partial-thickness burn hurts, so a clean dry covering, stillness and a comfortable position are genuine analgesia. Ointments trap heat and have to be removed later, opening blisters destroys the barrier over the wound, and telling a patient nothing can be done ignores what you already carry.
A semi-conscious patient is coughing weakly but effectively between your suction passes. That cough is best regarded as:
Answer: A. Protection you should avoid suppressing
A cough is the patient doing for themselves what your catheter does badly and briefly, so it is supported rather than shut down — deep repeated passes and a flat position both take it away. Reading it as irritation misses that the reflex is the good news in this patient, and treating an effective cough as an obstruction inverts the one finding that says the airway is being defended.
A patient deteriorates when you are two minutes from arrival rather than twenty-five. That should:
Answer: A. Push you toward continuing while you treat on the move
How far you are from the end of the trip changes what stopping costs, and two minutes of continued travel usually buys more than two minutes parked at the roadside. Treating the distance as irrelevant ignores the arithmetic entirely, and deferring the treatment altogether leaves a deteriorating patient untreated for the last stretch.
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