Role-play exercises with simulated patients may serve the purpose of training professionals to develop appropriate communication skills with adolescents. Authentic adolescent responses toward the physicians may be achieved by actors who themselves are in their teenage years. We describe our experience in continuing medical education programmes for primary care physicians aimed at improving their skills in communicating with adolescents, using simulation methodology with teenage actors. Eight 16-17-year-old actors from the drama department of a high school for the arts were trained to simulate 20 cases with characteristic adolescent medical problems, as well as confidentiality issues and home and school problems. The actors performed in front of large groups of 20-30 paediatricians, family practitioners, or gynaecologists in continuing medical education. Diagnostic issues as well as therapeutic and management approaches were discussed, while the actors provided feedback to the trainees about their understanding and their feeling regarding the issues raised during the exercises. Normally, smaller learning groups are more suitable for such training purposes; nevertheless the participants could appreciate learning the principles of careful listening, a non-judgmental approach and assuring confidentiality. A collaboration of medical schools and postgraduate programmes with high schools which have drama departments may be fruitful in the teaching of adolescent medicine with special emphasis on communication skills with teenagers.

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1 Role-play exercises with simulated patients may serve the purpose of training professionals to develop appropriate communication skills with adolescents. Authentic adolescent responses toward the physicians may be achieved by actors who themselves are in their teenage years. We describe our experience in continuing medical education programmes for primary care physicians aimed at improving their skills in communicating with adolescents, using simulation methodology with teenage actors. Eight 16±17-year-old actors from the drama department of a high school for the arts were trained to simulate 20 cases with characteristic adolescent medical problems, as well as con®dentiality issues and home and school problems. The actors performed in front of large groups of 20±30 paediatricians, family practitioners, or gynaecologists in continuing medical education. Diagnostic issues as well as therapeutic and management approaches were discussed, while the actors provided feedback to the trainees about their understanding and their feeling regarding the issues raised during the exercises. Normally, smaller learning groups are more suitable for such training purposes; nevertheless the participants could appreciate learning the principles of careful listening, a non-judgmental approach and assuring con®dentiality. A collaboration of medical schools and postgraduate programmes with high schools which have drama departments may be fruitful in the teaching of adolescent medicine with special emphasis on communication skills with teenagers.

This paper reports on research undertaken into the processes through which student teachers begin to formulate an identity as a professional teacher. Using Fuller's investigations into the attitudes of trainee teachers towards their courses (1969) as a baseline, a discussion is established on the place of the student voice in contemporary initial teacher training programmes. In order to further investigate the potential importance of affording student teachers the opportunity to reflect on and express their thinking and feeling as they embark on their chosen career path, the concerns of a group of student drama teachers were recorded and interpreted. The vehicle for this exercise involved writing and subsequently performing reflective monologues. These were analysed by using The Listening Guide as composed by Gilligan et al. (2003). This paper illustrates how the methodology revealed distinct yet generally harmonious voices at work in the group in the first few weeks of their training year. Subsequent analysis suggests a model for the initial formation of a teaching identity built on aspects of self, role and character. Recognising the relative values and relationships between these factors for student teachers may, it is argued, provide greater security for them while affording their tutors insights which could help them to re-shape initial teacher training programmes.

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