Which statement is true regarding respiratory rate factors?

• A. Anxiety can decrease a client's respiration rate.
• B. Opioid analgesics can increase a client's respiratory rate.
• C. Fever can increase a client's respiratory rate.
• D. Pain can decrease a client's respiratory rate.

Answer: (C)

Respiratory rate rises when the body's metabolic demands increase, such as with fever. Fever speeds up overall metabolism, leading to more CO2 production. To keep acid-base balance and oxygen delivery aligned with these higher demands, ventilation increases, so the breathing rate goes up (tachypnea).

Anxiety tends to accelerate breathing rather than slow it down because the sympathetic nervous system stimulates the respiratory centers. Opioid analgesics suppress the brainstem’s respiratory drive, leading to slower and often shallower breaths rather than faster. Pain usually increases respiratory rate due to stress and sympathetic activation, not decreases.

So fever increasing respiratory rate is the true, clinically observed effect among these factors.