I Was Lonely...

I've been practicing my assessment of a person's cognition using a Folstein or Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE). It consists of a series of questions and tasks that assess a person's orientation, memory and spatial ability. Over the past few months I've been doing an MMSE on anyone I've spoken to over 65 years old.

I completed the last admission for my mental health rotation yesterday. I spoke with a pleasant 71 year-old mother of 2 and grandmother of 2 who's been living by herself in a small cottage home in a small rural Queensland town ever since her husband passed away 12 years ago. She had come in for a recurrence of her depression for which she had been treated intermittently over the last 40 years...

At the end of the interview I ran through a quick MMSE. I tested her reading ability by writing "CLOSE YOUR EYES" on a piece of paper and asking her to do what it says. She completed this perfectly. I also tested her spatial ability by asking her to copy a diagram of intersecting pentagons. She didn't do so well with this test. Another test involved asking her to write down any complete sentence. This is what she wrote. =(


Mental health was a good choice for a first rotation - fairly relaxed and good way to ease into 3rd year. I saw a lot of patients depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. A few with psychosis here and there and not many with eating disorders. I feel like I didn't really contribute much to the patient care the entire time. It was more like everyone (staff and patients) was doing me a favor by inconveniencing themselves in order to teach me or speak to me.

Couple of exams next week, a week off for some hardcore USMLE study that has been taking the backburner, and then off to the West End for my GP rotation!