Introduction:

In recent decades, a progressive aging of our population has been taking place, which means that cognitive deterioration is one of the main problems to be addressed. The community nurse plays a crucial role in screening for cognitive impairment, and for this it has numerous questionnaires for such assessment, such as the Eurotest, the Pfeiffer, or the Fototest, among others. The most used in our environment is the Mini-Examen Cognoscitivo (MEC-35).

Aim:

To assess the reliability of the MEC-35 questionnaire applied by nurses to patients in the Primary Care setting.

Material and methods:

Inter-intra nurse reliability study of the MEC-35 in its use in the context of Primary Care.

Results:

The overall gross concordance between nurses was 77 (69-83) % and the random agreement according to Cohen's kappa was 49 (30-68) % (p <0.001). The gross global concordance within nurses was 72 (68-83) % and the free of chance 55 (27-83) % (p = 0.002). In the inter-nurse reliability assessment, 5 items (14%) obtained null concordance according to the Landis-Koch criterion, and 8 (23%) in intra-nurses reliability.

Conclusions:

The MEC-35, despite being a widely used screening tool among nurses, has insufficient confidence values.

Discussion:

Despite unifying criteria among the nurses who applied this tool, and taking into account the results of the study, it is proposed to eliminate some items with very low concordance and modify the wording of others to improve reliability in their use by community nurses. Such transformation requires the validity and reliability test of this version of the MEC-35.

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