Cranial Nerve Assessment - a dreadful doggerel I Must Share

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ever have one of those nights before a test when you get something inane stuck in your head and you can’t sleep?

Yeah…having one of those.

Anyhow, I decided to make it useful and create a wretched little ditty to memorize cranial nerve assessment. Figured I might as well share it with any other nursing students out there (I know there are several on the Dope). Or, if not, at least typing it here will help me to study! :smiley:

One nose to smell
Two eyes to see well
Three, four six
make your eyes do tricks
Forehead, cheek and chin
Five will do you in
Seven is the question
Can you make expressions?
Eight, can you hear
in both your ears?
Nine would gag Apollo
Ten will help him swallow,
Then with nerve eleven
raise shoulders up to heaven
“Light” and “tight”
twelve will get it right!

(“Three, four six, makes your eyes do tricks” is the not-original piece of this ditty that woke me up stuck in my head. I decided to write the rest around it.)

I - Olfactory nerve, controls the sense of smell
II - Optic nerve, controls vision
III - Oculomotor, moves eyelids down and helps the eyes converge to focus on a near object
IV - Trochlear nerve, moves eyes down to nose
VI - Abducens nerve, moves eyes to the sides
V - Trigeminal nerve, sensation (and a little movement) of the jaw, forehead and chin
VII - Facial nerve, the main motor nerve of the whole face, controls muscles needed to frown, smile, make and angry face, etc.
VIII - Acoustic nerve, controls hearing
IX - Glossopharyngeal nerve, controls gag reflex
X- Vagus nerve, controls smooth swallowing
XI - Spinal accessory nerve, controls shoulders’ upward movement
XII - Hypoglossal nerve, controls the tongue; to test, ask pt. to say “light and tight”

There’s a little dance to go along with it, but I think I’ll spare you and try to go back to bed now! :smiley:

2

And here I was thinking they’d given you some really GOOD drugs to prep you for your Cranial Nerve Assessment in the morning. :smiley:

Remind me to arsk my physicians/ nurses next time as to whether they’ve recited the pome. Maybe I’ll have more confidence in them if they have!

Or maybe not as the case may be :stuck_out_tongue:

3

That’s awesome! I’m stuck on why five is “will do you in,” though.

4

Only because it rhymes with “chin”! :slight_smile: The thing our teacher really wants us to remember is that it’s a nerve with three branches, one to the forehead, one to the cheek and one to the chin. If you’ve lost sensation in your face in more than one of these areas, it’s probably a problem with number 5.

My little “dance” includes a forefinger on the forehead, middle on the cheek and ring finger down the jaw, then turning the hand up to show all five fingers. Hard to explain, but it’s a kinesthetic mnemonic as well as a word one.

I’m teaching this to my classmates as part of a presentation tomorrow, I decided. I need a 5 minute filler along with our group’s crossword puzzle on the topic.

5

Do you know a mnemonic for the names of the nerves? I was always stuck with “Oh, Oh, Oh! To Touch And Feel Very Gooey Vegetables*. AH!!” after having it told to me by a tiny quiet shy little female classmate. The way she said it, just burned it into my mind.
*Not “vegetable”. Insert other words here as you see fit.

There’s plenty of 'em herethough.

And I always did like “Some Say** M**arry Money, But My Brother Says Big Boobs* Matter More.” for knowing the Structure/function of each of the CNs. (S= sensory, M= motor, B= Both).

*Boobs can be “Brains” too. Whichever one works for you. I learned it first Brains, but the other one stuck more…

6

There are some positively delicious ones out there, aren’t there? :smiley:

7

On Old Olympus’ Towering Tops, A Fat-Assed German Vends Spanish Hops was always my favorite.

Regards,
Shodan

8

On Old Olympus’ Tiny Tops, A French And German Viewed Some Hops.

This from my first ex-wife, who was an LPN.