Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, November 7, 2011
[Excerpt]
Don Schwartz is sitting on an examination table in a hospital gown, eyes closed, getting into character.
An actor, he must channel a 55-year-old with chest pain for medical students at UCSF. In medical schools across the country, students are perfecting their bedside manner and taking high-stakes tests needed to graduate by practicing on "standardized patients" like Schwartz - actors who fill in for the real thing.
The national Standardized Patient Program provides actors with scripts, and students are evaluated based on how well they diagnose the patient's medical problems. Actors are asked to rate the students afterward. In Schwartz's case, UCSF students must examine him and ask the right questions to ascertain he's suffering from heartburn and anxiety.
UCSF professors monitor the interaction down the hall in a room with 18 flat-panel monitors. Schwartz appeared anxious, fidgety and impatient with the questions about his smoking, drinking and high-pressure job. Several times he let out long exhalations like a person trying to calm a racing heart. "Students can practice in a safe environment, they can ask the right or wrong questions, they can come up with a diagnosis that isn't right," said Bernie Miller, a former standardized patient who was tapped to lead the Standardized Patient Program at UCSF in 2000.
Actors are finding steady work playing everything from dying cancer patients to obese teenagers with diabetes. Specialized actors even undergo gynecological and rectal exams. "It's like a casting call, but from the hospital," said Kathy Mello, 69, of Albany, who has played a suicidal patient, a heart attack survivor afraid having sex with her husband will jeopardize her health, and a dying woman.
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