HESI A2 › § Mathematics
Free HESI A2 Mathematics Practice Questions
The HESI A2 Mathematics subtest runs to roughly fifty scored questions in about fifty minutes, though your test site's exact version can vary slightly. It leans hard on dosage calculation, fractions, ratios, percentages and unit conversion, the arithmetic a nurse actually does at a bedside.
The seven questions below are original, written by RedRubric and mapped to the same outline, not lifted from any HESI form. Get one wrong and you will see exactly why, worked through step by step, so a shaky method gets fixed before test day, not on it.
A supply closet holds 12 boxes of syringes, and 5 of them are the 3 mL size. What fraction of the boxes are 3 mL syringes, written in lowest terms?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: D, 5/12
The denominator counts all 12 boxes and the numerator counts the 5 that are 3 mL, giving 5/12, which is already in lowest terms since 5 shares no factor with 12 besides 1.
A blood bank had 2,050 units of a blood product in storage. Over a two day span, 1,286 units were used, then 349 new units were donated. How many units are in storage now?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: D, 1,113
First subtract the units used: 2,050 minus 1,286 equals 764, which requires borrowing across the hundreds and thousands columns. Then add the donation: 764 plus 349 equals 1,113 units in storage.
A unit uses the expression 3p - q to estimate spare wheelchairs needed, where p is the number of patients using mobility aids and q is the number already staged in storage. Today, p = 6 and q = -4. Evaluate the expression.
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: B, 22
Substitute the values, keeping the negative in its own parentheses: 3(6) - (-4). Multiply first: 3 times 6 equals 18. Subtracting a negative flips to addition: 18 + 4 equals 22.
A nurse combines partial vials and records a total of 12 3/8 millilitres. Written as an exact decimal, what is 12 3/8?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: D, 12.375
3 divided by 8 gives exactly 0.375, so 12 3/8 = 12.375. Option b unnecessarily rounds an exact terminating decimal, and option a drops the whole number entirely.
Central supply starts the night with 500 N95 masks. One unit uses 12% of the stock and a second unit uses a further 8% of the original stock. How many masks remain?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: B, 400
The two withdrawals total 20% of the original 500, which is 100 masks used, leaving 400; forgetting the second withdrawal gives the wrong 440.
Over five night shifts, the mean number of patient calls was 6. Four of the shifts recorded 5, 7, 4 and 8 calls. How many calls were recorded on the fifth shift?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: C, 6
A mean of 6 across five shifts means the total is 6 x 5 = 30. The four known shifts sum to 24, so the fifth shift is 30 minus 24, which is 6. Using only four shifts to build the total, or forgetting one of the known values when summing, gives the wrong totals.
A nurse manager has 2 5/8 boxes of gloves and divides them evenly across 3 units. She then wants to know how many 1/2-box portions each unit's share contains. How many 1/2-box portions does each unit get?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Correct answer: A, 1 3/4
First convert 2 5/8 to 21/8 and divide by 3 to get each unit's share, 21/8 x 1/3 = 7/8 of a box. Then divide that share by 1/2: 7/8 x 2/1 = 14/8 = 1 3/4 portions. Stopping after the first step gives the wrong 7/8, and multiplying by 1/2 instead of dividing in the second step gives 7/16.
That is seven of hundreds.
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