2008 Woodie Awards
Diagnosis drama: actors portray patients for med-students
Alison Freehling / Daily Press(MCT)
Issue date: 2/19/07 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 3 next >
As Bob Shepherd shuffled into a room at Eastern Virginia Medical School, his whole body broadcasted pain - downcast eyes, slow walk, flat voice and clasped hands. He was not sleeping well and did not have an appetite; Shepherd told a room of would-be doctors. A year earlier, he explained, he had lost his wife of forty years.
"I never thought that I would be the one here and she would be gone," Shepherd said, breaking into tears. "We did everything together."
A volunteer from the group of medical school applicants patted Shepherd's shoulder, probed for details about his life and gently talked him into counseling. That is when the sixty-two year-old Hampton, Va., man snapped out of patient mode and turned into a teacher.
"Your empathy was good throughout," Shepherd said. "Your open-ended questions were good, but you needed to ask me a lot more of them. Also, you cannot automatically rule out some dementia in addition to my depression. You have to pay attention to every word I say."
Shepherd is one of a group of local residents who play a unique role for medical students: fake patients. Formally known as "standardized patients," the eighty-five member group helps doctors-to-be learn how to diagnose illnesses and, just as importantly, develop a good bedside manner. "If patients like you and trust you, they are going to open up and talk about things that are very sensitive," said James Kiraly, communications trainer and media specialist at EVMS. "They also are more likely to listen to you and do what you say. If it even appears to a patient that you're not interested, that is really going to matter."
Fake patients are familiar to "Seinfeld" fans, who saw the Kramer character perform his assignment of gonorrhea so well that he worried about typecasting. But at EVMS, standardized patients are serious business. They are a regular part of the curriculum for all four years and they can pull off way more than one measly sexually transmitted disease.
"I never thought that I would be the one here and she would be gone," Shepherd said, breaking into tears. "We did everything together."
A volunteer from the group of medical school applicants patted Shepherd's shoulder, probed for details about his life and gently talked him into counseling. That is when the sixty-two year-old Hampton, Va., man snapped out of patient mode and turned into a teacher.
"Your empathy was good throughout," Shepherd said. "Your open-ended questions were good, but you needed to ask me a lot more of them. Also, you cannot automatically rule out some dementia in addition to my depression. You have to pay attention to every word I say."
Shepherd is one of a group of local residents who play a unique role for medical students: fake patients. Formally known as "standardized patients," the eighty-five member group helps doctors-to-be learn how to diagnose illnesses and, just as importantly, develop a good bedside manner. "If patients like you and trust you, they are going to open up and talk about things that are very sensitive," said James Kiraly, communications trainer and media specialist at EVMS. "They also are more likely to listen to you and do what you say. If it even appears to a patient that you're not interested, that is really going to matter."
Fake patients are familiar to "Seinfeld" fans, who saw the Kramer character perform his assignment of gonorrhea so well that he worried about typecasting. But at EVMS, standardized patients are serious business. They are a regular part of the curriculum for all four years and they can pull off way more than one measly sexually transmitted disease.
Be the first to comment on this story