Let’s be honest for a second. Nursing school is less like a traditional academic program and more like being dropped into a jungle with a compass that only works half the time. You’re juggling clinicals, pharmacology cards that seem to multiply overnight, and the constant, looming pressure of standardized testing.
If you’ve been scouring the internet or digging through old study archives, you’ve probably stumbled across a very specific, somewhat legendary phrase: rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions.
It sounds like a secret code, doesn’t it? For many nursing students, that’s exactly what it feels like. It refers to a specific set of practice questions often associated with ATI or similar benchmark exams—that became a touchstone for students trying to gauge if they were actually ready to handle real-world nursing.
I remember my own time in nursing school. There was this frantic energy before every fundamentals exam. We weren’t just studying; we were hunting. We were looking for patterns, for the logic behind the questions. That’s why these older question banks, like the 2016 versions, stick around. They aren’t just old tests; they are a window into the mind of the test-makers.
In this deep dive, we aren’t just going to list answers. That doesn’t help you when you’re standing at a patient’s bedside at 3 AM. We’re going to break down the why and the how of nursing fundamentals, using the spirit of those classic 70 questions as our guide.
Why “Fundamentals” is the Hardest Class You’ll Ever Love (Eventually)
When you start nursing school, you want the adrenaline. You want the ER trauma, the complex surgeries, the life-saving moments. Then you get to Fundamentals class, and you’re spending three hours learning how to properly wash your hands and make a bed.
It feels tedious. It feels disconnected from the “Grey’s Anatomy” version of nursing you had in your head.
But here is the truth: Fundamentals is the hardest class because it forces you to think like a nurse for the first time. Before this, you thought like a normal person. Normal people see a patient in pain and think, “Give them medicine.” A nurse thinks, “Assess the pain level, check the vitals, consider the last dose, look for non-pharmacological interventions, and then maybe give the medicine.”
The rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions set became famous because it was brutal in testing this shift in mindset. It didn’t ask you simple facts. It asked you to prioritize. It asked, “All of these answers are correct, but which one is the most correct?”
That is the essence of nursing.
The “Maslow” Trap: How to prioritize like a Pro
One of the biggest themes you see in any fundamentals practice set especially the tough ones like the 2016 versions is prioritization. You have four patients. Who do you see first?
- The patient asking for water.
- The patient with a pain level of 6/10.
- The patient who is post-op day 2 and vomiting.
- The patient with a sudden onset of shortness of breath.
If you are thinking like a compassionate human, you might want to help the person in pain. But the test wants you to think like Maslow.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is your best friend. Physiological needs come first. Oxygen is the most basic physiological need. If you can’t breathe, nothing else matters. You can’t be in pain if you aren’t breathing (dark, I know, but true).
In those rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions, you’d often see scenarios where the distractors (the wrong answers) were incredibly tempting. They appealed to your heart. But the right answer always appealed to the ABCs: Airway, Breathing, Circulation.
Real-Life Scenario
I once had a preceptor tell me, “Don’t run to the beeping pump; run to the gasping patient.” It sounds obvious, but when three alarms are going off, your brain panics. Fundamentals trains that panic out of you. It teaches you to filter noise and find the immediate threat to life.
Safety First: The “Do No Harm” Principle
Another massive chunk of any fundamentals exam revolves around safety. In 2016, and even today, the NCLEX and ATI exams are obsessed with safety. Why? because a rookie nurse is dangerous. You don’t know what you don’t know yet.
The questions often look like this:
- Restraint usage protocols.
- Fall precautions (who gets the yellow socks?).
- Infection control (Standard vs. Contact vs. Droplet).
Let’s talk about restraints. It’s a hot topic. The rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions usually hammered home that restraints are a last resort. If the question offers you an option to “move the patient closer to the nurses’ station” or “ask a family member to sit with them,” that is almost always the answer over “apply wrist restraints.”
It’s about least restrictive measures. It’s about dignity.
If you are looking for resources on patient safety standards, checking out the Joint Commission website is a must, as they set the golden rules for these protocols.
The Art of Therapeutic Communication
This is where students lose the most points. It seems so easy. “Just be nice to the patient.” But “nice” isn’t the same as “therapeutic.”
In the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions, you’d see dialogue options.
- Patient: “I’m worried I might have cancer.”
- Nurse Option A: “Don’t worry, your doctor is the best.”
- Nurse Option B: “Why do you think that?”
- Nurse Option C: “You’re feeling anxious about your diagnosis?”
- Nurse Option D: “Let’s talk about your breakfast.”
Option A is “False Reassurance.” It’s a killer on exams. You can’t promise things will be okay.
Option B uses “Why.” Never ask “Why.” It makes patients defensive.
Option D is changing the subject—rude and dismissive.
Option C is the golden ticket. It’s called “Reflecting” or “Restating.” It validates the patient’s feelings without adding your own opinion. It opens the door for them to talk more.
It feels weird to talk like this at first. It feels robotic. But in practice, when a patient is scared, simply hearing their fear validated (“It sounds like you’re really overwhelmed right now”) is incredibly powerful. It builds trust instantly.
Fluid and Electrolytes: The Silent Killer of Grades
If Communication is where you lose points, Fluid and Electrolytes (F&E) is where you lose your mind.
Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium. They are invisible, but they control everything.
- Potassium (K+): Think heart. Too high or too low? Cardiac arrhythmias. This is usually the priority on a test.
- Sodium (Na+): Think brain. Neuro changes. Confusion. Seizures.
- Calcium (Ca+): Think muscles. Tetany. Twitching.
The rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions were notorious for tricky F&E questions. They wouldn’t just ask “What is the normal range for Potassium?” (It’s 3.5 – 5.0, by the way).
Instead, they’d say: “A patient taking furosemide reports leg cramps and fatigue. What is the priority nursing action?”
You have to connect the dots: Furosemide is a loop diuretic -> It dumps potassium -> Leg cramps are a sign of hypokalemia -> I need to check the cardiac monitor or get a K+ level.
That is three steps of logic for one multiple-choice question. That is why nursing school is exhausting.
Pharmacology Basics in Fundamentals
You haven’t taken full Pharm yet, but Fundamentals dips your toes in the water. It focuses on the process of giving meds more than the meds themselves.
The “Rights” of Medication Administration are sacred.
- Right Patient
- Right Medication
- Right Dose
- Right Route
- Right Time
- Right Documentation
The 2016 question banks loved to trap students on “Right Route.” Can you crush an enteric-coated pill? Absolutely not. Can you open an extended-release capsule? No way. If you do, you dump 12 hours of drugs into the patient’s system in 12 minutes.
Also, the “Check Three Times” rule. You check the med when you pull it, when you prep it, and at the bedside. It seems excessive until you almost give insulin instead of heparin because the vials look similar. Then, you realize the rules are written in blood.
The Physical Assessment: Head to Toe
When you are looking back at the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions, you see a lot of assessment questions. “Which sound is this?” or “Where do you place the stethoscope?”
Here is a tip that saved me: Look, Listen, Feel.
Inspection first. Auscultation (listening) second. Palpation (feeling) last.
Exception: The Abdomen.
If you poke a belly before you listen to it, you might stir up bowel sounds that weren’t there, or mess up what you’re hearing. So for the tummy, it’s Look, Listen, then Feel.
These little procedural quirks are exam fodder. They want to know if you are paying attention to the details.
Mastering the “Select All That Apply” (SATA) Nightmare
Nothing strikes fear into a nursing student’s heart like the phrase “Select All That Apply.”
You think you know the answer, but do you know all the answers?
The trick with SATA questions whether on the NCLEX or practice sets like the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions is to treat each option as a True/False statement. Don’t look at them as a group.
Read the stem (the question). Then look at Option A. Is it true in isolation? Yes? Click it. Move to Option B. Is it true? No? Skip it.
If you try to group them or find patterns, you will talk yourself out of the right answer. Trust your gut on the individual facts.
Taking Care of Yourself While Studying
This is the part that isn’t on the test, but it should be. The stress of trying to memorize thousands of facts can burn you out before you ever get your license.
When I was studying for my boards, I hit a wall. I couldn’t retain anything. I was reading the same paragraph about sterile fields five times and absorbing zero information. I had to step away.
You have to sleep. Your brain consolidates memories during REM sleep. If you pull an all-nighter, you are literally deleting the work you did that day.
You have to eat something other than vending machine crackers.
And you have to laugh. Find a study group that actually studies but also spends 10 minutes venting about how weird the mannequins in the simulation lab look. Shared suffering creates the strongest bonds.
How to Use Old Practice Questions Effectively
So, you have access to something like the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions. How do you use it without memorizing outdated info?
- Check for Updates: Medicine changes. In 2016, protocols for things like CPR or certain infection controls might have been slightly different. Always cross-reference with your current textbook. If the 2016 key says one thing and your 2024 textbook says another, trust the textbook.
- Focus on the Rationale: The answer “C” doesn’t matter. The paragraph explaining why it is C matters. That rationale is the gold. It explains the physiology or the safety rule.
- Identify Your Weak Spots: If you get every questions about diabetes wrong, stop taking tests. Go back and re-read the diabetes chapter. Questions are for testing knowledge, not learning it from scratch.
For more current study strategies and practice questions, sites like NCSBN (the folks who write the NCLEX) offer great insight into how questions are formulated today.
The Evolution of Testing
It is interesting to see how testing has changed since 2016. The Next Generation NCLEX (NGN) is now the standard. It uses case studies and different question formats to test “clinical judgment.”
However, the core knowledge hasn’t changed. A heart failure patient in 2016 looks just like a heart failure patient in 2024. The fluid overload is the same. The need for diuretics is the same.
That is why resources like the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions are still whispered about in study groups. The format may change, but the physiology of the human body remains the same. The logic of “Airway First” never goes out of style.
Conclusion: You Can Do This
Nursing school feels impossible while you are in it. It feels like hazing. But one day, you will be on the floor. You’ll hear an alarm. You’ll walk into a room, look at a patient, and your brain will instantly go: Airway is clear, breathing is labored, circulation looks poor. Sit them up. Check O2. Call for help.
You won’t be thinking about a text book. You won’t be thinking about the rn fundamentals 2016 70 questions. You will just be acting. You will be a nurse.
And all those late nights, all those tears over Select All That Apply questions, and all that stress will suddenly make sense. It was building you into someone who can save a life when it counts.
Keep studying. Keep breathing. You’ve got this.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is the “RN Fundamentals 2016 70 questions” set still relevant for the Next Gen NCLEX?
Yes and no. The specific format of the questions has changed with the Next Generation NCLEX (NGN) to include more case studies. However, the content—the medical facts, nursing priorities, and safety protocols—remains largely the same. Using older questions is great for testing your core knowledge, just be aware the testing format itself has evolved.
What is the best way to study for Fundamentals of Nursing?
Don’t just memorize facts. Understand the “Why.” Nursing requires critical thinking. Instead of memorizing that a patient with heart failure needs to weigh themselves daily, understand that weight gain indicates fluid retention, which indicates the heart is failing to pump effectively. Understanding the mechanism helps you answer any variation of the question.
How do I handle “Select All That Apply” questions without guessing?
Treat each option as a True/False question based on the main prompt. Don’t compare the answers to each other. Read the question, then read Option 1. Is it true? Yes or no. Then move to Option 2. This isolates the facts and stops you from overthinking patterns that aren’t there.
Why is Maslow’s Hierarchy so important in nursing exams?
It provides an objective framework for prioritization. In an exam, you have four “correct” actions, but you can only do one first. Maslow dictates that physical survival (Airway, Breathing, Circulation) always trumps pain, anxiety, or teaching. If you follow Maslow, you usually find the right answer.
What are the most common topics covered in Fundamentals?
You will almost always see questions on:
- Patient Safety (Falls, Restraints, Infection Control).
- Medication Administration (The 6 Rights).
- Vital Signs (Normal ranges and what to do when they are abnormal).
- Therapeutic Communication.
- The Nursing Process (Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementation, Evaluation).
