Question

A 46-year-old patient with a head injury opens the eyes to verbal stimulation, curses when stimulated, and does not respond to a verbal command to move but attempts to push away a painful stimulus. The nurse records the patient's Glasgow Coma Scale score as?

1) 9
2) 11
3) 13
4) 15

Answer 1

The patient's Glasgow Coma Scale score, based on described responses, should be 10, combining eye opening (3), verbal response (2), and motor response (5). The options provided are incorrect, but the closest would be 11 assuming a misinterpretation in the verbal response as confused.

Step-by-step explanation:

The patient in the question opens eyes to verbal stimulus, utters curses when stimulated, and moves to push away painful stimulus but does not follow verbal commands.

To score the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), we assess three areas: eye opening, verbal response, and motor response.

The patient's eye response would score a 3 (eyes opened to verbal command), verbal response would score a 2 (incomprehensible speech), and motor response would score a 5 (localizing pain). Adding these together gives us a GCS score of 10.

However, none of the options provided (9, 11, 13, 15) includes the correct score of 10. There might be a typo in the options, and the closest correct score would be option 2) 11, assuming that the verbal response was misinterpreted, and the patient is actually confused (which scores a 4 on the GCS) instead of uttering inappropriate words.