Monday, August 12, 2013

3 words

Whenever I give a patient three words to remember as part of the mini-mental, I always use the same words:

Apple, table, penny

Because if I switch them up, there's a very good chance I will forget which words I used.

I've heard reasons why people use certain three words, but frankly, I like my three words.

What are yours?

16 comments:

  1. In med school we learnt:

    Ball, flag, tree...


    It's the same as our local memory clinic and my mildly demented but very intelligent grandmother learnt them by heart. Unfortunately no one believed my mum when she told them Grandma had been practicing under her breath in the car!

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  2. Apple, table, penny.

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  3. ost sykkel bok. (cheese, bike, book) - your blog is read here in Norway as well :)

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  4. When I rotated at the dementia practice, the neurologist used 4: cuchara, manzana, martillo, caballo (spoon, apple, hammer, horse).

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  5. technically the three words are each supposed to have at least two syllables and at least one should be something abstract like "thirty-three"

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  6. We are taught Tree, Rock, and House in theory, but during our psych rotation we noticed that most of the doctors used words with two syllables or more as well, which makes more sense. I've never forgotten which words I used before, but it's probably a good idea to use the same ones every time.

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  7. I use Red, Tree, Honesty. But separate from the MMSE, I prefer to use three pairs of words: Red/Ball, House/Income, Tree/Honesty. I find those much more effective in screening for Alzheimer's than the MMSE.

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  8. Bonging right now, what were those words?

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  9. All I know is, that by the time I'd read through the comments, I'd forgotten your words. =/ Oh, dear.

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  10. I use Blue, elephant, South Dakota

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  11. Baseball table shoe

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