Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low ...

Ravi August 7, 2019

@Ryan-Scirocco,

Great question.

This question is asking us what we can infer from the passage. We have
a series of conditional statements, so the best thing to do is to
diagram the stimulus and deduce as much as possible from there. Often
times, on these questions you can predict what the correct answer
choice will be if you figure out what can be figured out from the
conditional statements in the premises.

We have

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants
not attract more applicants - >lower standards or shortage of nurses
shortage of nurses or lower standards - >not maintain quality

This all links together to form

Problems not solved - >not attract more applicants - >shortage of nurses
or lower standards - >not maintain quality

The inference the correct answer choice highlights will be something
in this chain.

(E) says, "The current high quality of health care will not be
maintained if the problems of low wages and high stress working
conditions in the nursing profession are not solved."

(E) translates to

problems not solved - >not maintain quality. This is the beginning and
end of the chain we made, so this is precisely the conclusion that we
can draw from the premises. Thus, (E) is the correct answer choice.

Doing work up front when examining the stimulus pays dividends in
allowing you to go through the answer choices quickly. (E) is clearly
correct based on our analysis, and all of the others fail to match up
with the conditional chain we've mapped out. Making that chain lets
you easily see why the wrong answers are wrong and why the right
answer is right.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!