NCLEX Lab Values flashcards
This deck covers the laboratory values NCLEX questions assume you already know: the major electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus), the complete blood count, arterial blood gases, coagulation studies, renal and hepatic markers, glucose and HbA1c, and the therapeutic ranges for digoxin and lithium. Every range is given in the standard US units used on the exam, so you memorize the number and the unit together.
Lab values show up on the NCLEX indirectly far more often than they appear as a straight recall question. A stem hands you a potassium of 6.2 mEq/L or a pH of 7.28 and asks what you do first, which client you see first, or whether to hold a medication — and you cannot answer any of that until you know instantly whether the value is normal, high, or low. Committing the ranges to memory turns those items into simple prioritization questions instead of guesses.
The deck
How to study this deck
- Learn each value as number plus unit in one breath — mEq/L for sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium and bicarbonate; mg/dL for calcium, phosphorus, BUN, creatinine and glucose. Mixing up units is what makes a correct number score zero on a fill-in-the-blank item.
- Once you can recall a range, do a second pass asking 'what is the nursing action if this is high, and if it is low?' — hyperkalemia and hypokalemia, for example, both point to cardiac monitoring but to opposite treatments.
- Drill the ABG values (pH, PaCO2, HCO3) as a set of three rather than one at a time, then practice classifying sample gases: respiratory versus metabolic is decided by whether PaCO2 or HCO3 moved in the same direction as the pH.