I have just come across an ESA85 report which contains, under the Medical Examination Findings,
" Cognitive test
Serial Sevens: Able to complete five rounds
Calculate Change: Able to calculate £1 minus 75p
Registration: Able to remember 3 objects.

The results as listed do not mean anything relevent to the descriptors.

Not seen this in any reports until today. Anyone else come across this "new test" to assess mental health or is the HCP trying to be different.

All thoughts welcome

Does your client's claim have any references to short term memory loss? I ask because the test you describe looks similar to one of the ones they use where Altziemers/Dementia is suspected; can't think what else was might have been in his mind.

If the client had experienced difficulty with the test whilst it was being applied in a GP's consulting room then further tests would probably be carried out.

There's nothing new about the use of these mini tests of cognitive ability. They were very frequently used in PCA examinations to get a quick picture of some aspects of cognitive functioning and are part of the so-called "mini-mental state asssessment" which my big book of interesting medical thingies calls a 5 minute bedside test which is used as a screening tool. It was designed by three psychiatrists and published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
The questions listed are:
Orientation: 1 point each for correct answers to time, day, date, month, year, and where you currently are (town eg).
Registration: repeating names of up to 3 items named.
Attention and calculation: serial 7s.
Recall: the 3 items in the last test but one
Language: name two ordinary objects;
- repeat accurately "no ifs, ands or buts"
- correctly carry out a three-stage command eg "With the first finger of your right hand touch your nose and then your left ear"
- doctor writes "close your eyes" on a piece of paper and passes it to patient to do what it says.
- Patient has to write a sentence and only scores if it makes sense and has at least one noun and a verb.
- Doctor draws two intersecting pentagons with sides about 1 inch long and asks patient to copy it.
The maximum total score if the patient does everything right is 30 points. A score under 23 picks up 90% of cognitive impairments with 10% false positives. It's said to correlate strongly with general intelligence, less good with problems caused by actual brain damage.
So very respectable - if used in the right circumstances.

The other test, which I've seen several times in recent LCW assessments, is to spell 'world' backwards.