Midterm Exam Review: NR 503/ NR503
Epidemiology Exam Review |Complete Guide
with Verified Answers (2023/ 2024 New
Update)-Chamberlain
Q: Is screening a tertiary intervention? If yes, why, if not, what is it?
Answer:
No, it is secondary.
Q: How does a provider determine the usefulness, appropriateness, of a screening test?
Answer:
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.
Q: Can you explain what “descriptive epidemiology” means? What is the purpose? How is it
used?
Answer:
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-yearold.).
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.
Q: How are causation and descriptive epidemiology related, how do they work together to aid
evidence-based care?
Answer:
Causation- helps look at the cause of the issue or disease process. Descriptive epidemiology
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.
Q: 4 types of casual relationships
Answer:
- Necessary and sufficient (rare)- a factor is both necessary (disease will appear only if the
factor is present) and sufficient (exposure always cause disease). - Necessary but not sufficient: more than one factor is required. Tb is a factor, but even if
present not always the person get sick. - Sufficient but not necessary – specific fx can cause disease, but other fx can cause the same
disease. Ex. anemia - Neither sufficient nor necessary – specific fx can be combined with other fx to produce
disease. but disease can be produced without the factor.
Q: What does “causation” mean? Can you relate causation to primary, secondary and tertiary
interventions?
Answer:
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.
Q: Are you able to discuss “surveillance” and its relationship to “causation”?
Answer:
is the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the
planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice closely integrated with the
timely dissemination of these data to those who need to know. Passive surveillance involves
using data to look at reportable diseases while active involves using individuals such as project
staff interviewing physicians about cases. Using surveillance can help identify the causation of
diseases particularly in a specific population.
Q: absolute risk
Answer:
the incidence of disease in a population
Q: risk factors
Answer:
a condition that may adversely affect an individual’s health
Q: relative risk
Answer:
The ratio of the risk of disease on exposed individuals to the risk of disease in non-exposed
individuals.
Q: Odds Ratio
Answer:
The ratio of the odds of development of disease in non-exposed person.
Q: Attributable risk
Answer:
How much of the risk (incidence) of the disease we hope to prevent if able to eliminate exposure
to the agent in question.
Q: Incidence Rate
Answer:
The number of new cases of a disease that occurs during a specified period of time in a
population at risk for developing the disease.
Q: prevalence rate
Answer:
Total number of people infected at one time in a population at specific time, divided by the
number of persons in the population at the same time
Q: What is the case-control study and how does it differ (or how is it the same) as the cohort
study design?
Answer:
The cohort study design identifies a people exposed to a particular factor and a comparison
group that was not exposed to that factor and measures and compares the incidence of disease in
the two groups. A higher incidence of disease in the exposed group suggests an association
between that factor and the disease outcome. This study design is generally a good choice when
dealing with an outbreak in a relatively small, well-defined source population, particularly if the
disease being studied was fairly frequent.