As most Beejites know, I am a medical transcriptionist who works at home. Most of the patients that I'm typing about are nursing home residents, and I'd say a whopping 99.9% of them have seen better days. In a large number of cases, these patients have some degree of dementia, and the degree of their cognitive impairment is a factor in determining the correct treatment. One way health professionals chart this is by giving an MMSE. The doctors and nurse practitioners that I work for call it a Mini Mental Status Exam, but I think it's actually an acronym for Mini Mental State Exam. At any rate, the test is just a series of 11 questions and only takes about 5 or 10 minutes to administer. The highest you can score is a 30 and any score under 23 is a red flag. Patients are tested routinely, so if one week their score drops suddenly, the facility is alerted that action may need to be taken.
Now that you're all up on the system, I'm here to say I'm pretty sure I'd flunk that test. The very first question is worth 5 points and asks for the year, season, date, day and month. I know I'd miss at LEAST 2 of those. I NEVER, no never, know the day or the date.
The part of the test where you have to remember three things and be able to recall them later in the exam would make me lose 3 more points. I have no room in my brain to store any unnecessary clutter, much less pull up that same unnecessary clutter from the vast amount of information already hanging around in there.
The part where you have to add 7 + 7 and then keep adding 7 to your answer made my head hurt. I lose at least 4 points there because after the initial answer of 14, I'm really just not interested in playing that game any more. (It didn't occur to me right away that I could just use my multiplication table knowledge to answer, which in itself is a serious concern, don't you agree?)
The language portion of the test where you have to follow a three step command requires you to 1. Take a paper in your hand 2. Fold it in half and 3. put it on the floor. Is that not littering? Do you know how hard I try to keep my kids from just tossing stuff on the floor? I refuse. Minus 1.
By my calculations, my score would be somewhere around 20, which puts me right under that acceptable score where people don't really worry about you or your ability to get your shoes on by yourself in the morning. So, I think people should worry about me more and maybe cook the dinner for me so I don't burn the house down or run the errands and drive the kids to and from school so I don't make some crazy traffic mistake because of my impairment. I don't think enough people are concerned about my mental health. I'm just an accident waiting to happen.
At least I can spell "world" backwards.
I think.
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3 comments:
Ooh, this is a fun test! I'm trying to think of ways to cheat, but not coming up with anything.
You need to demand some home health care, stat!
You're crazy!
... But funny... so there's something in it for me. :D
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