Skill Development

Many of our interactive workshops include the use of standardized patients.

Standardized patients are actors who are carefully trained to portray real patient cases. The standardized patient workshops are specifically designed to offer practitioners an opportunity to practice skills in interviewing and counseling on selected topic areas.

Examples of workshop topics include:

• HIV risk assessment
• HIV prevention and safer sex
• HIV test counseling, including rapid testing
• Adherence to medication

Training is conducted within a small group setting with a faculty facilitator and a standardized patient. Techniques such as “time – in” and “time-out” serve to help the group identify learning issues and discuss the progress of the interview, what works with the patient, and what needs improvement.

Our use of standardized patient is different from role-playing. With the use of standardized patients, the same demeanor, body language, and emotion as the real patient is represented and participants react to the patient much as they would in their practice. However, with standardized patients, participants can practice different methods and discuss patient issues within the learning group without harming the real patient. Further, workshops using standardized patients can be arranged without the usual restrictions that would normally accompany training experiences with a real patient.

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