Most f my posts are pretty serious but thought I'd share a story from my time as a standardized patient.
Though I am too disabled to work now, I did manage to work at least part time for most of my life despite my disabilities/chronic illnesses(though it was torture and all I could do was work and sleep). I am a performer. I was in bands/hosted karaoke and I am an actress.
Standardized patients are essentially actors who role play for medical students-usually during testing. We learn our character's histories, symptoms and act out specific scenarios. I worked in a medical school for osteopaths and a big part of my job was observing bedside manners, and giving feedback especially on empathy. Osteopaths need to express empathy during patient encounters or they can fail. I have some stories on working with those who would not pass the empathy tests as well. But I digress...
We as SPs had to learn every aspect of our characters including hobbies substance uses, sexual orientations, marital status etc while also "faking" illnesses. Sometimes we would be cast in roles of illnesses we actually had. I was able to play both an asthma and migraine patient and I already had both of those conditions. I can basically wheeze on que (that's not really a good thing but for these cases I didn't have to fake anything lol).
We worked in mock patient exam rooms with cameras. There was also almost always a faculty member observing in the room. Even when folks were not observing in the room there were students and faculty observing in the media room watching the cameras. We did have to wear hospital gowns but were allowed to wear shorts and sports bras to help with modesty .
Here's a funny story from my first year as an SP. It was during a major exam time for first year med students. I believe this was the finals leading to summer break. Students were observing each other's interactions with patients from the cameras and evaluating each . In this scenario there was just one student in the room but multiple others watching on camera.
Though we had very specific details we all had to be "standardized" as we were allowed to improv a little as long as it was appropriate for the character.
It's final exams for first year med students. Most of them are very nervous and it is kind of high stakes. I don't remember the case exactly but I think it was a sprained ankle (fun fact I also did the fx make up for bruises and wounds sometimes)
We are at interview/the review of systems part of the encounter and the student starts asking social type questions like substance uses, tobacco, cannabis,married/single. Usually when they'd ask "do you drink alcohol?" We would reply "yes" and the student is then supposed to ask for more details like how much, how often etc. This student was very thorough and we did a few round of this for all these questions. Side note: students in every encounter were instructed to ask questions about sexual activity and also menstrual cycles of female patients. These questions are normal and expected.
He then asked if I was sexualy active. My character was and also is married and I said yes. The student then asks "how often?" I could see the embarrassment on the student's face. I pause for a moment thinking "I don't have this data" and came up with a sarcastic joke something to the effect of "well I'm married so not as often as I'd like"
This was followed by an outburst of laughter from the media room as other people heard this as well.
After the encounter we then broke up into groups for feedback. It was myself and another SP talking about the encounters and addressing issues or praising good work. The students /observers were also there.
We started the feedback session with a question like"what have you learned from your colleagues today?" The student I worked with said "Well I have learned from myself not to ask how often a patient has sex. I am so sorry. so embarrassing". Then everyone had a laugh.
I said that I wasn't offended I just didn't have the data and had to think of something. He learned to slow down and make sure he's not just acting on auto pilot and to pay attention to what he was really asking.
It was a funny teaching moment. My co workers and I all had some laughs talking about the story in the break room and the student learned a valuable lesson.
