BY EMILIJA SAGAITYTE | PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM DETOUR
Trained actors play an essential role in medical student education.
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“ What brings you in today?” the medical student asks the actor, who climbs a stair up to the examination table in the clinical skills suite at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University— rooms designed to resemble doctors’ offices and equipped with otoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, and other props— or, more accurately, medical tools.
In this specialized setting, the actor is known as a standardized patient, commonly referred to as an“ SP.” An actor memorizes their script. An actor rehearses, not just words but also their movements. An actor adopts new dialects and new personas. An actor becomes one with the character they portray, embodying someone different but also bringing themselves to the stage. An actor must have the proper costume wardrobe. Today, a flimsy cotton hospital gown will do.
What brings this actor to this medical school, to this clinical classroom? Like all standardized patients at Brown and at most US medical schools— and many other types of clinical training programs— the actor has been hired by the institution, undergone training, and practiced and prepared to act out the history, symptoms, and exam findings of a real patient while following the instructions of a pre-written, realistic clinical encounter that they have memorized. Their purpose is to help students develop the patient interviewing, physical examination, and interpersonal skills they will use as clinicians.
SPs can choose the types of sessions in which they participate and the extent to which they become involved. Common sessions at Brown include Doctoring classes; Objective Structured Clinical Examinations, where students are evaluated on their ability to independently navigate a surprise case with a patient; and ultrasound sessions, where students practice using ultrasound probes and recognizing structures on imaging. According to K. Scarlett Handley, RN, BSN, Brown’ s director of the Clinical Skills Simulation Center and Standardized Patient Program, SPs also participate in encounters as part of educational summer programming, faculty development, interprofessional education( which includes students from different health professions), and the Internship Preparatory Course, which readies medical students for residency.
ACT I: MEETING THE STANDARDIZED PATIENT A small group of medical students greets the physician instructor and the SP. A student introduces themselves and asks the standardized patient,“ What brings you in today?”
“ I have been having some chest pain,” they respond. The simulated visit continues as the student runs through questions and practices the heart and lung exams. The MD in the room offers guidance— and the SP does as well, noting how the interaction could be improved.“ We need to give the student actionable feedback,” Paula Goldberg, a Rhode Island native and a standardized patient at Brown since 2011, says.
While rarely a doctor, the SP teaches through the lived experience and vulnerability of being on the exam table, conveying guidance that directly impacts these student doctors’ future patients.“ I think it’ s been really nice to learn beyond the textbook curriculum with the SPs,” medical student Kate Salguero Lizarraga says.“ I learn something new with each SP interaction.”
Even with the unstated, mutual awareness of the simulated nature of the encounters, the interactions are taken seriously. Medical student Celinie Nguyen sees value in treating“ every case like it is real and is actually impacting the” standardized patient.
“ The student doctor and the standardized patient they’ re speaking to— we’ re doing our part in that little 30-minute segment to create a sense of healing for someone else down the line,” William Oakes, a standardized patient at Brown since 2004, explains,“ so it’ s all paying it forward.”
FALL 2026 l HEALTH DISCOVERIES @ BROWN 11