Simulated patient

Simulated patients have been successfully utilized for education, evaluation of health care professionals, as well as basic, applied, and translational medical research.

The actors would describe the illness the unseen child was suffering from, requiring the medical students taking the history to develop differential diagnoses based on the mother's testimony.

Since 2004 SPs have been used to assess the clinical competencies of osteopathic medical school candidates in the COMLEX USA Level 2-Performance Evaluation.

[citation needed] SPs can also serve as a "confederate" in a simulation to perform the roles of other clinicians within the care team.

[5] For teaching future healthcare professionals how to perform intimate examinations, a specially trained simulated patient may be used.

[8] SPs need to draw on their own personal experiences with physicians, conversations with healthcare professionals, talking to specific patient populations etc.

[11] Frequent quality assessment may be needed to ensure consistency in the portrayal of the patient role; especially since SPs may absorb a significant amount of clinical knowledge from their interactions with healthcare professionals.