PA 505 Week 2 MSE Narrative Example

Course	PA 505 Behavioral Medicine I
Week	2
Paper type	Mental status examination narrative
Length	About 800 words, 5 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Chamberlain University
Program	Master of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for PA 505 Week 2

Mental Status Examination Narrative: A Zipped Canvas Jacket, a Cap Turned in Both Hands and Answers That Arrive Late, Written as Continuous Prose

Student Name

Chamberlain University

PA 505: Behavioral Medicine I

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title names three observations from the visit and the form, which tells a reader that evidence comes before any summarizing word.

Mental Status Examination Narrative: A Zipped Canvas Jacket, a Cap Turned in Both Hands and Answers That Arrive Late, Written as Continuous Prose

Setting

This narrative records the mental status examination at the second clinic visit of the 68-year-old retired road-maintenance worker introduced in the first week, seen on a Tuesday afternoon in a rural health clinic. The visit lasted about thirty minutes and was conducted in English, the patient's only language. The patient wore hearing aids and reading glasses throughout. No family member was present. The examination was woven into the interview rather than given as a separate test, except for the brief cognitive items described in the last paragraph.

The Narrative

W.T. was already seated when I came in, upright in the chair nearest the door, a canvas work jacket zipped to the collar although the room was warm. The jacket stayed on for the whole visit. A seed-company cap was held in both hands and turned slowly through the first ten minutes, then set on one knee. Clothing was clean but the same as at the visit two weeks before, and W.T. had shaved on one side of the jaw and missed a patch on the other. Eye contact was brief and returned to the floor between questions. W.T. sat very still apart from the cap; there was no restlessness, tremor or unusual movement.

Speech was clear and of normal volume, but answers came after a pause of three or four seconds, long enough that twice I began to repeat the question before the answer arrived. Sentences were short and complete. Asked how things had been, W.T. said, "Not much to tell. I get up, I do the chores, I sit." Asked to describe the mood in a word, W.T. said, "Flat. Like a tire." The face moved little through the conversation, including when talking about the grandchildren, and it changed only once, when the spouse's name came up, with tears that W.T. wiped with the back of a hand and then apologized for. I would describe the affect as restricted in range, reactive only to the spouse, and in keeping with the mood W.T. described.

Thinking was organized and goal-directed; every answer stayed on the question and reached an end. There were no unusual beliefs. Content returned repeatedly to the farm lot being "too much now" and to the spouse's illness, including the sentence, "I should have pushed for the scan in the fall." When I asked about thoughts of death, W.T. said there had been mornings of not wanting to wake up; that exchange is set out in full in the risk formulation, and I recorded here only that it was raised and answered. W.T. denied hearing or seeing things others did not and nothing in the visit suggested it.

W.T. knew the date, the clinic and why we were meeting. Asked to name the months of the year backward from December, W.T. did so slowly and without error, and of three words given for later recall brought back two unaided at the five-minute mark and the last one once told it was a fruit. W.T. said the headaches were "probably the whiskey and the sleep," which I took as partial insight, and had agreed to come back, keep a headache calendar and bring the tablet bottles, which I took as intact judgment for the decisions at hand.

What this page is doingEach summarizing term, such as restricted or partial insight, sits directly after the observation that produced it, so a second reader could keep the evidence and discard the word.

Notes on the Choices

A headed form would carry eleven rows, from how the patient looked through to judgment, and the prose reaches each of them without a single label. The order is roughly the order in which the observations happened during the visit, which is what lets a narrative stay honest about when each finding appeared. The jacket, the cap and the half-shaved jaw are kept because they are the physical evidence for the later word "self-care," and quotation is used only where the patient's own words are the finding, the flat tire and the sentence about the spouse. The thoughts of death are named and pointed elsewhere rather than summarized away. Cognition is described by the tasks given and their results instead of "grossly intact," a phrase that tells a reader nothing about what was tested (Martin, 1990).

What this page is doingExplaining why each observation is kept, and naming the tasks behind the cognitive line, shows the narrative still covers the full form without becoming a checklist.

What Was Not Examined

Formal tests of abstraction and calculation were not done, and the cognitive items were brief screening tasks, not a full cognitive assessment. The visit did not test whether the slowness of answers was the same at another time of day, which matters if the picture later changes.

What this page is doingNaming the parts left unexamined in the place they would have occupied lets a later reader see the gaps instead of assuming a normal finding.

References

Martin, D. C. (1990). The mental status examination. In H. K. Walker, W. D. Hall, & J. W. Hurst (Eds.), Clinical methods: The history, physical, and laboratory examinations (3rd ed., Chapter 207). Butterworths. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK320/

What the PA 505 Week 2 assignment asks for

The second week asks for a mental status examination written as narrative prose rather than under headings. The narrative still has to reach every area a headed form would cover: appearance, behavior, speech, mood, affect, thought process and content, perception, cognition, insight and judgment. Describe what was seen and heard, anchored to moments in the encounter, and let any summarizing term come only after the observation that produced it. Quote the patient where their own phrasing is the finding, and nowhere else. Name the tasks behind any statement about cognition rather than writing that it was intact. Where an area was not examined, say so in the sentence it would have occupied. Add brief notes explaining your choices and the order you chose.

Inside the PA 505 Week 2 example

The narrative opens with setting: a thirty-minute afternoon visit in English, hearing aids and glasses in place, no family present. It then follows the visit. W.T. sits by the door with a work jacket zipped in a warm room and a seed-company cap turning in both hands, with a missed patch on one side of the jaw. Answers arrive after three or four seconds. Mood is given in the patient's words, flat like a tire, and the affect is described as restricted and reactive only to the spouse, with the tears and apology recorded as they happened. Thought content returns to the farm lot and the spouse's illness, and thoughts of death are named and pointed to the risk note. Cognition is described by the months-backward task and the three-word recall. Notes explain the order, the kept details and the quotation choices, and a final section names what was not examined.

Where the points sit in the PA 505 Week 2 rubric

The loss peculiar to the narrative form is the area that disappears without leaving a gap. A headed form shows an empty row, but prose that never reaches perception simply reads as finished, and those points are gone before anyone notices. The next largest deduction goes to a sentence in which a summarizing word does all the work, depressed or anxious, with nothing a second reader could check. Further losses follow for a narrative made mostly of quotation, which preserves the encounter without examining it, for cognition reported as grossly intact with no task named, and for inference presented as observation. Full marks go to prose that covers every area, anchors findings to moments, puts evidence before each term, quotes sparingly and states what was left unexamined. Notes that explain choices, rather than repeating the narrative, add the final points.

PA 505 Week 2 help from the desk

Writing a mental status examination as prose is a different skill from filling a form, and most first drafts either lose an area or become a transcript. Share the encounter or video your section assigned and we can help you track each area through the visit, decide which observations carry the evidence and place summarizing terms after them. We can also help you choose the few quotations that are findings in themselves, and phrase the cognitive section around the tasks actually given. A short closing note on what was not examined is easy to forget, and we can help you write it where it belongs. The observations and your clinical reading stay yours. If your section requires headings or a set order, the custom sample follows that layout while keeping evidence ahead of every term.

Get a PA-505 Week 2 example written to your instructions

Send the instructions, any form your section issues, and the scripted or recorded encounter it supplies, and a custom PA-505 Week 2 narrative is written into that material and returned inside 24-48h, the first one free. Anything you observed yourself stays yours to record, and an example is built around a constructed encounter instead.

More PA 505 papers and MPAS samples

PA 505 Week 2 questions, answered

Our section supplies headings. Is it still a narrative?

Usually yes, and the headings make the coverage problem easier rather than harder. Write prose inside each one instead of a string of single words, keep the observation ahead of any term that sums it up, and let the headings do what a narrative cannot, which is show a reader at a glance that nothing was skipped over.

The encounter we were given is scripted. Does that limit the write-up?

It limits what may honestly be claimed, and saying so is worth marks. A scripted participant behaves as written, so anything you record about how the encounter went is a record of the script working. Describe what is observable in it exactly as you would from life, and keep any statement about why the person behaved that way out of the document.

Can a narrative state that something was absent?

It can, and the useful version says how absence was established. Not reported when asked directly is a different entry from not raised, and a reader can act on the first and not the second. Where a scripted encounter never touched an area at all, that belongs in the narrative too, written plainly rather than filled in from what seemed likely.

Where can I find a free PA 505 Week 2 sample paper?

You can read a complete PA 505 Week 2 mental status narrative for a widowed patient in a zipped work jacket on this page, with notes on its choices.

How does the PA 505 Week 2 sample describe cognition?

By the tasks given and their results, naming the months backward without error and recalling two of three words with the third after a cue.