For MN610 Unit 7, a composite 84-year-old living alone is assessed on function, cognition, mood, mobility, nutrition and her daughter's strain, with findings ranked by what matters to her. Searches like "mn 610 unit 7 assignment example", "mn610 unit 7 sample" and "mn610 unit 7 example" land here.
Can She Still Live Alone? A Geriatric Assessment of an 84-Year-Old Whose Daughter Noticed Missed Bills
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MN610: NP III Clinical - Primary Care Focus
Unit 7 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Composite patient written as a model document. Scores are composite; nothing here is a diagnosis of any real person.
Portrait
A composite 84-year-old woman, widowed eight years, lives alone in a second-floor apartment with an elevator. She played the organ at her church for forty years and still attends every Sunday, driven by a neighbor. Her daughter lives forty miles away and visits on weekends. Her problem list holds seven diagnoses, including hypertension, osteoarthritis, hypothyroidism and chronic kidney disease stage 3a. When I asked what she most wants from her care, her answer came at once: "Staying in my own place, with my own piano."
Function
Instruments: the Katz index for basic self-care (Katz et al., 1963) and the Lawton scale for instrumental tasks such as finances and medicines (Lawton & Brody, 1969). Findings: independent in each of the six basic activities the index scores, from bathing and dressing through feeding. On the Lawton scale, independent for telephone, shopping with help carrying, food preparation, housekeeping and transportation by arrangement; dependent for finances, where two utility bills went unpaid, and for medications, where her pill organizer was found half-filled with the wrong days. What it establishes: she can care for her body but no longer manages two complex tasks. It does not yet explain why.
Cognition
Instrument: Mini-Cog (Borson et al., 2000). Finding: score 2 of 5, recalling one of three words and drawing an abnormal clock. What it establishes: a positive screen, which calls for a fuller evaluation and a search for reversible contributors, not a diagnosis of dementia. Contributors to check: thyroid function, B12, sodium and calcium, medications with anticholinergic or sedating effects, hearing and vision, and mood.
Mood
Instrument: Geriatric Depression Scale, 15-item short form (Yesavage & Sheikh, 1986). Finding: 4, below the usual cutoff of 5. What it establishes: depression is not likely, though her daughter describes her as quieter since a close friend died in the spring.
Mobility
Instrument: Timed Up and Go (Podsiadlo & Richardson, 1991). Finding: 15 seconds, with a slow turn. She fell once in the kitchen last winter and was not hurt. What it establishes: slower than expected and consistent with increased fall risk; she needs a fall assessment and possibly physical therapy.
Nutrition
Instrument: Mini Nutritional Assessment short form (Rubenstein et al., 2001). Findings: 4 kg lost over six months; score 9 of 14. What it establishes: at risk of malnutrition. Given its own domain because weight loss has several possible causes here, including forgetting meals, difficulty shopping, dental problems and low mood after her friend's death, and each calls for a different response.
Caregiver
Instrument: Zarit Burden Interview, short form (Bédard et al., 2001), completed by her daughter. Finding: [score], in the range suggesting moderate burden. What it establishes: the daughter is a finding in her own right. She drives eighty miles every weekend, works full time and is worried about leaving her mother alone.
Other Domains
Hearing: difficulty in noisy rooms; whispered voice test abnormal on the left. Vision: glasses updated two years ago; cataract noted. Continence: occasional urge incontinence, managed with pads. Medications: eight; cross-referenced with the instrumental activities finding, since she can no longer manage them reliably, and including [a sedating antihistamine] for sleep. Advance directives: none on file; she named her daughter as the person to decide for her.
Synthesis Under the 4Ms
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Age-Friendly Health Systems framework organizes care of older adults around four elements: What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility (Mate et al., 2018).
What Matters: staying in her own apartment with her piano, and keeping her church. Medication: eight medicines, a sedating antihistamine among them, and an organizer she cannot fill reliably. Mentation: a positive cognitive screen and mood that is not depressed but is shaken by a loss. Mobility: a slow Timed Up and Go and last winter's kitchen fall.
Ranked actions:
1. Visit one, today: stop the sedating antihistamine; arrange blister packs from the pharmacy; draw labs for reversible causes of cognitive change.
2. Visit two, in two weeks: fuller cognitive evaluation, with results of labs and a hearing test; discuss help with finances, such as automatic bill payment set up with her daughter.
3. Visit three, in six weeks: physical therapy for gait and balance, already referred today; a nutrition review, including a dental check and a meal delivery service.
4. Throughout: complete an advance directive naming her daughter, and connect the daughter with a caregiver support service.
What She Agreed To
She agreed to the blister packs, the labs, the hearing test and physical therapy. She declined meal delivery for now, saying she likes to cook. She agreed to automatic bill payment only if her daughter sets it up with her present. The plan was built to keep her at home, which is what she said matters most. Whether she can continue to live alone is not answered by this assessment alone. It depends on the results of the fuller cognitive evaluation and on whether the supports put in place today, blister packs, automatic payments and physical therapy, hold over the next two months. The question will be asked again at visit three with those results in hand.
References
Bédard, M., Molloy, D. W., Squire, L., Dubois, S., Lever, J. A., & O'Donnell, M. (2001). The Zarit Burden Interview: A new short version and screening version. The Gerontologist, 41(5), 652-657. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/41.5.652
Borson, S., Scanlan, J., Brush, M., Vitaliano, P., & Dokmak, A. (2000). The Mini-Cog: A cognitive "vital signs" measure for dementia screening in multi-lingual elderly. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 15(11), 1021-1027. https://doi.org/10.1002/1099-1166(200011)15:11<1021::AID-GPS234>3.0.CO;2-6
Katz, S., Ford, A. B., Moskowitz, R. W., Jackson, B. A., & Jaffe, M. W. (1963). Studies of illness in the aged. The index of ADL: A standardized measure of biological and psychosocial function. JAMA, 185(12), 914-919. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1963.03060120024016
Lawton, M. P., & Brody, E. M. (1969). Assessment of older people: Self-maintaining and instrumental activities of daily living. The Gerontologist, 9(3, Part 1), 179-186. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/9.3_Part_1.179
Mate, K. S., Berman, A., Laderman, M., Kabcenell, A., & Fulmer, T. (2018). Creating age-friendly health systems: A vision for better care of older adults. Healthcare, 6(1), 4-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hjdsi.2017.05.005
Podsiadlo, D., & Richardson, S. (1991). The timed "Up & Go": A test of basic functional mobility for frail elderly persons. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 39(2), 142-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.1991.tb01616.x
Rubenstein, L. Z., Harker, J. O., Salvà, A., Guigoz, Y., & Vellas, B. (2001). Screening for undernutrition in geriatric practice: Developing the short-form Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA-SF). The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 56(6), M366-M372. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/56.6.M366
Yesavage, J. A., & Sheikh, J. I. (1986). Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS): Recent evidence and development of a shorter version. Clinical Gerontologist, 5(1-2), 165-173. https://doi.org/10.1300/J018v05n01_09
How this MN610 Unit 7 example is structured
A short portrait comes first: who she is, where she lives, who helps, and what she says matters most, which is staying in her own apartment. The domains follow in a fixed order so nothing is skipped, each opening with the instrument named and the score, then a line saying what that number does and does not establish. The cognition section is careful: a positive screen leads to a fuller evaluation and a check for reversible contributors, not a label. The medication domain cross-references the instrumental activities finding, since she can no longer manage her pills reliably. The synthesis regroups everything under the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 4Ms, What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility, and ranks four actions across the next three visits. A closing line records whether she agreed to the plan and what she declined.
Get an MN610 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Share the Unit 7 scenario along with any assessment instruments your MN610 instructor specifies and the rubric. With those in hand, a geriatric write-up comes free on a first request within 24-48h: organized by domain, each score interpreted in a sentence, findings regrouped around what matters to the patient, and caregiver capacity measured rather than assumed. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
MN610 Unit 7 questions, answered
Which instruments belong in a geriatric assessment write-up?
Use the ones your course names first. Commonly accepted choices include the Katz and Lawton scales for function, the Mini-Cog or MoCA for cognition, the Geriatric Depression Scale for mood, Timed Up and Go for mobility, and the MNA short form for nutrition. Whatever you choose, report the score and what it does and does not show.
Can the write-up diagnose dementia from a screening score?
No. A screening instrument identifies someone who needs further evaluation. The write-up should record the positive screen, list reversible contributors to check, and describe the fuller assessment planned. Graders treat a diagnosis drawn from a single screen as a clinical error, and patients and families reading the chart would see it the same way.
How should the findings be prioritized?
Start from what the patient says matters most, then rank findings by how much they threaten that goal and how fixable they are. The 4Ms framework offers a useful grouping. A write-up that lists every abnormal score with equal weight shows the data were gathered but not interpreted, which is the part this unit usually rewards.