Standardized Patient Program

What is a Standardized Patient?

The Standardized Patient is a healthy person who has been carefully trained to realistically reproduce the history, physical and emotional findings of an actual case.  These individuals provide health care educators a valuable tool for teaching new skills, refining old ones, and evaluating the participants performance.

Standardized Patients provide a safe and risk free experience in which learners can refine skills and techniques in the time they need. Our learning environment is not constrained by the time, staff and patient limitations of a busy physician’s practice. Standardized Patients are not intended to replace real patient experience but to provide a realistic simulation of that experience in a teaching/learning situation.

Interested in becoming an SP?

Information for booking rooms and standardized patients can be found on our booking resources page.

Complete a Quality Report on a Standardized Patient e-mail completed form to trainer@mcmaster.ca

Complete a Quality Report on a Pelvic Teaching Associate e-mail completed form to trainer@mcmaster.ca

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Simulation Uses and Advantages

1. Develop interviewing, communication, interpersonal, diagnostic and examining skills individually or in a group.
2. Provide a situation which is controllable.
3. Provide a risk free environment to an otherwise real and sensitive situation.
4. Stimulate discussion about professional behaviour.
5. Provide objective feedback to the participant.
6. Evaluate and assess skills.
7. Reassess competency in professionals at all levels.

Availability — Any time or any place. The simulation can be booked weeks in advance for use at a specific point within the module being taught. The flexibility makes it easy to plan experiences for effective and efficient learning.

Adaptability — Allows for monitoring in areas of great sensitivity or risk, where immediate intervention is not always possible. Various problems can be discussed mid-simulation to clarify direction, reactions and problem definitions without risk.

Repeatability — There is minimal variation from participant to participant or session to session. The presenting problems are standardized and consistent and the participant is allowed to repeat a task until it is mastered.

Controllability— Standardized patients are taught to provide a determined amount of unsolicited information and in what way to provide answers to the participant's questions. A simulation can be adjusted to the level of the participant. For instance, the degree of emotion displayed during an encounter can be tailored to meet your goals.