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Landon Center on Aging
Landon Center on Aging  :  Geriatric Education & Training

Geriatric Skills Fair

Station 1

Preceptor Guide

Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE)

Printable Versions of Materials needed to create station:

Guide for Preceptors:

NOTE: the information posted just below is identical to that in the printable version of the preceptor guide above.

Preparing for this task: Due to copyright issues, we do not post a copy of the MMSE here. However, the Folstein MMSE is widely available, and it is used here for teaching purposes only. Two case vignette scripts are provided here. Case A represents cognitive impairment and Case B is within normal limits. Before you begin, you will need to change the Kansas City responses so they are appropriate for your location. You may also wish to make the day-of-the-week scripted response incorrect for Case A and correct for Case B. Once you have made these changes, then print off and laminate the scripts. We also suggest you laminate a copy of the MMSE tool itself so that students may score it using an erasable white-board type marker, and then it can be erased and used again for each student group to score the vignettes.

Facilitating this station: In the early part of the academic year, we find that the students are unfamiliar with the MMSE. Later, they have generally encountered it on other rotations but still benefit from having specific pitfalls pointed out to them. We make the following points before the students start their role play:

  1. This is only a screening tool, and does not give you a diagnosis.

  2. Score norms vary by age and education level.

  3. If the patient can't hear you well, you can't accurately administer this tool.

  4. Do not prompt patients to correct their answers.

  5. Be sure to use the same three objects each time so you don't forget which prompts you gave!

  6. Be sure to give all three steps of the 3-step command before handling the paper to the patient.

  7. We also show examples of common problems with the intersecting pentagons.

After explanations, proceed to the role-play. If sutdents are in pairs, we ask one student to administer and score the tool while the second student role-plays the script. If we have thrid student in the group, we have one ask the items, one give the role-play responses, and the thrid on is responsible for scoring the tool. Afterwards, we review the score and its interpretation.

We often have time for only one of the two vignettes, but this depends on the time of year and the size of the student groups at each station.

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