Today’s students have the advantage of technology that enables them to gain more skills in a no-risk environment before they head out in the real world and to have tools that aid them in diagnostics and monitoring.
However, those educational aids don’t train medical staff in how to respond to a patient who, say, is facing a difficult diagnosis, or how to read a patient’s face and movements to assess pain levels.
While high-tech manikins can help students improve their interpersonal skills by simulating a real patient, standardized patients (SP), or patient actors, have become the gold standard in helping students master this key area of their learning.