Standardized Patients

Abstract

Standardized patients (SPs) are trained actors who are used to engage health care providers in various types of clinical encounters for the purposes of training and evaluation. In the past, SPs have most often been a tool for training clinicians in "traditional" medical skills such as the taking of medical histories or the conduct of physical exams. More recently, however, SPs have been increasingly used to assist in the development and assessment of psychosocial skills, including those related to patient-centered communication, relationship building, and motivational interviewing. Given this shift, it is argued that the time is ripe for exploring ways that health educators can adopt SP methodologies, whether for providing continuing education for individual providers or evaluating organizations or programs. This article introduces ways of using SPs and discusses strengths and challenges related to various approaches.

Use of Simulated Patients and Reflective Video Analysis to Assess Occupational Therapy Students’ Preparedness for Fieldwork

“…OSCEs and simulated clinical encounters are routinely used in many health-related education programs as a way to measure student competency at the end of their didactic curriculum (Chang et al, 2009;Parekh & Thorpe, 2012;Rutherford-Hemming & Jennrich, 2013;Tai & Chung, 2008;Velde et al, 2009;Weaver & Erby, 2012). This article highlights a model for a final comprehensive practical examination that used both simulated patients and reflective video analysis to assess occupational therapy student preparedness for Level II fieldwork.…”

“…Simulation is increasingly being used by various medical professions to evaluate student performance before beginning clinical practice (Chang, Boscardin, Chou, Loeser, & Hauer, 2009;Parekh & Thorpe, 2012;Rutherford-Hemming & Jennrich, 2013;Velde et al, 2009;Weaver & Erby, 2012). Assessments using simulated patients are often designed in one of two ways: (1) as brief encounters to assess a single clinical skill, otherwise known as an objective structured clinical exam (OSCE), or (2) as complex encounters to attain a more holistic view of the student's ability in multiple areas of evaluation and treatment, otherwise known as a simulated clinical encounter (Prislin et al, 1998).…”

Simulated patient encounters to improve adolescent retention in HIV care in Kenya: study protocol of a stepped-wedge randomized controlled trial

“…Standardized patients (SPs) are trained actors who work with HCWs in simulated clinical encounters for training and evaluation [ 21 ]. Clinical training using SPs is an acceptable and effective approach to improve HCW skills in patient-centered care, including empathy, communication skills, and adherence to clinical guidelines [ 22 , 23 ]. Studies in low-resource settings have used SPs to evaluate quality of health service delivery [ 20 , 24 – 26 ], but there are few examples of SP training interventions.…”

Detecting the effects of physician training in self-care interviewing skills: Coding of standardized patient (SP) visit recordings versus SP post-visit ratings

“…Standardized patient (SP) visits are widely utilized to assess health care providers’ interviewing behaviors [1]. Absent a gold standard method of measuring interviewing behaviors in SP visits, coding of visit recordings is often regarded as the most optimal approach [2].…”