Picture the following scenes.
Scene 1. A med school student enters an exam room, greets the patient, and prepares to start an examination. But the patient, a young woman, has a panic attack, starts screaming uncontrollably, and begins running around the room. What is the student to do?
Scene 2. A med school student enters an exam room, greets the patient, a middle-age crabby woman, and asks her questions about
her sex life. The woman replies angrily, "WHAT ARE YOU ACCUSING ME OF?" and refuses further cooperation. What is the student to do?
Scene 3. A med school student enters an exam room, greets the patient, a middle age man, but before the student can do anything, the man starts bitterly complaining non-stop about
the hospital, the staff, and everything, and refuses to be examined. What is the student to do?
But none of these scenes are real. Each is a staged training skit designed to acquaint the student with situations that he might someday actually encounter in real practice, and seeing them now in a training environment might give him insight for how to deal with them if he does encounter them later on.
There is even a name for the "patients" here, the actors, who can even be everyday people like you and me, BTW. That name is "standardized patient."
The article below gives a good account of this phenomenon, the "standardized patient." It even points out that there may be paying opportunities (perhaps $ 15-20 per hour, per the article) in nearby medical schools for those looking to pursue this as a side means for making some extra money.
From the article:
"Medical schools around the U.S. and the world need these people to help train their students."
"Typically, every medical school will have them."A quick Youtube video about
standardized patients:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=standardized+patients+site%3awww.youtube.com&docid=603496424699623292&mid=29a9a43d8d92a2b668f329a9a43d8d92a2b668f3&view=detail&form=vireThe article then describes some of the job requirements for doing this, such as having at least some degree of acting ability, flexibility, and acting professional, among others. It even provides guidance on how to pursue this as a possible sideline:
"If you’re interested in applying for this type of work, start by searching Indeed.com and typing in “standardized patient” along with your state."(I tried it, and that website actually does list "“standardized patient" job
openings by state).
but
"If the Indeed.com search doesn’t yield any results in your area, try doing a Google search of the medical school nearest you + “standardized patient.” To get you started, here are links to Johns Hopkins’ standardized patient program, Tulane’s standardized patient program, and the Medical College of Wisconsin’s standardized patient program."Well, okay, maybe not all of us are really all that interested in pursuing a gig as a "standardized patient," pretending to be a real patient for the training experience of med school students. But it is interesting to learn that some people do, and they actually get paid for it.
And maybe for some people who have always had a pent-up urge to be an actor, this could be their opportunity to do so! And make some cash to boot!
https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/side-gigs/standardized-patient-jobs/#:~:text=you%20get%20paid%20between%20%2415%20and%20%2420%20per,take%20care%20of%20real%20patients%20in%20the%20hospital.Interesting.
(And for those further interested, here's a detailed Wikipedia discussion of "standardized patients," also called "simulated patients" apparently, and their role in the medical training process)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/simulated_patient (P.S. It occurs to me, and I wonder, whether having had the degree of PCa experience that we have all had would give us an edge, if we really were interested in applying for a job as a "standardized patient"?)