On Becoming a Standardized Patient!!

Me, acting and looking much younger!                              Ms. Proscenium Player, 1958

                                                                                           Bloomington High School

Mercer University is a private Baptist School located in Macon, Georgia and about a year ago I joined their School of Medicine as a Standardized Patient.  Standardized comes from the fact that all patients must be the same, and patient comes from….well, the aspiring young doctors need patients with ailments to diagnose.  Most who serve in this capacity…and we are paid for our work…have theatrical backgrounds, as we are acting.  Some “encounters”…as the med school calls them…are more improvisational than others!  There is no script, but there is a scenario, and the training we receive in how to be the patient is extremely in-depth and professional!  Truly awesome!

       So, if you are playing the role of a patient for a med student, and I am doing the same, our ailments, etc. must be as standard as possible so all students are exposed to exactly the same symptoms. Make sense?  Got it? The instructors of the med school, also physicians, can then assess equitably.

       OK, now that you hopefully understand what is going on, I am going to leave you hanging and next writing I will share a few of the scenarios, people involved, and whatever else pops into my brain!!  Oh and by the way, I love doing this!  Let us never forget that I was chosen Ms. Proscenium Player in 1958 as I graduated from Bloomington High School in Bloomington, Indiana….the home of Indiana University. Not sure what exactly that meant, but I still have the plastic trophy! By the way…the Proscenium is the arch that frames the stage!

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