Touro University looking for a few good medical patients
By RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN, Times-Herald staff writer
If you don't mind the idea of being the subject of medical students' practice, then has Vallejo's Touro University got a part-time, occasional job for you.
The Mare Island osteopathic medical school is paying people to pretend to be patients for its medical students, but it's not as scary as it sounds. In fact, at least one local resident who's done it says it's fun and interesting. And a local doctor insists it produces better medical professionals.
The program works by training people called "standardized patients" to pretend to have certain symptoms as well as medical and family histories. Medical students examine and diagnose them, said the program's lab director Cee Harrelson. There are no invasive procedures.
"They use this system to hone their communication and clinical reasoning skills," Harrelson said. "All medical schools do this. Stanford, U.C. Davis, U.C. San Francisco, all have these programs."
Touro is offering an explanatory demonstration Tuesday of the program, called the OSCE (Objective Structural Clinical Evaluation) System.
Most medical schools have an OSCE program, which helps medical students practice their bedside manner and diagnostic skills.
Touro's Dr. Greg Troll of Sebastopol, said standardized patients have become an important tool for turning out well-rounded doctors, pharmacists, medical assistants and other medical professionals. The practice was devised about 25 years ago.
"My training at Stanford included it in the early years of the movement," Troll said. "We've gotten more sophisticated at it over the past decade.
"In the old days, they only gave doctors written tests, and there was no way to see if he was good at talking with patents or getting information from them or giving exams," he said.
For $10 per hour, the standardized patient is told what his or her medical symptoms are, along with the answers to questions the medical student will likely ask, Harrelson said. "Patients" are expected to remain in character in an exam room, as medical students visit them and others in an assembly-line-like manner.
The "doctor's appointment" is designed to be as realistic as possible, including its brevity.
"The medical students greet the patients and visit with them for 13 minutes," Harrelson said. "Then a bell rings, and they leave, and spend seven minutes documenting their findings, and then go on to the next patient."
Harrelson said all Touro's medical and physician assistant students will be tested in this way twice a year, with each session lasting eight to 10 days.
The school needs people of all ages 18 and older, of both genders, all sizes, shapes, colors and ethnicities, Harrelson said.
The sessions are digitally documented and later the students are assessed by their "patients" and graded by their professors, based on their performance.Pamela Hudson of Vallejo, 51, has been a pretend patient at Touro twice once as a patient with menopause and once, suffering from headaches.
"It's difficult in that I had to evaluate 15 students in one day," said Hudson, whose daughter is a fourth-year medical student at Touro. "It's interesting to see the different approach each student takes how confident or nervous he or she is."
Harrelson said she enjoys seeing her students transformed.
"It's wonderful to see the student come through the door and be the doctor they're training to be," she said.
- E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at
[email protected] or call 553-6824.
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Get paid to be a patient
What: "Standardized patient" demonstration and explanation
When: 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Touro University, Building H-86, Room 122, Mare Island
Call: 638-5869
oes the patented happy dance::
