ABSTRACT
At a recent meeting a colleague and I had with the dean of a medical school, we discussed the school’s “standardized patient” method for giving medical students experience in communicating with patients of particular types-patients with terminal illness, with AIDS, with diabetes, and so forth. In this method, actors are rigorously trained to play the role of the patient after being briefed on the medical issues and symptoms, given specific guidelines and instructions about how to act, and then rehearsed. Medical school faculty use the standardized patient method to help students learn “communication [interactional] skills” that they will need to work effectively with patients.
