Modelling the lay expert for first-year medical students: the actor-patient as teacher

Abstract

Actors are widely used in medical education as simulated patients. In this session, the role of actors was extended to 'simulated students' and facilitators in an introductory communication session. After an initial activity with the entire cohort of first-year students, groups of 20 students worked with either an actor or medical teacher in three activities. The activities aimed to raise students' awareness of the range of communication challenges in medical education and practice. After the session, students completed evaluation forms based on their experiences in the session. The results revealed no difference between students who were facilitated by actors or medical teachers in relation to meeting the learning objectives and their ratings of the usefulness of the activities to support learning. The actors who participated in this session were experienced in working with medical students. Their enhanced role provides students with an opportunity to identify with and reflect on the expertise of a lay teacher and to consider extending their definition of a learning opportunity to more informal encounters.

Role play and #8211; an eff ective tool to teach clinical medicine

“…Role-play is widely used as an educational method for learning about communication in medical education. Although roleplay is regularly used to develop communication skills in medical students [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], there are few published papers that evaluate role-play as an educational method. Experiences of using role-play to teach students about communicating have met with mixed success.…”

“…Role-play is widely used as an educational method for learning about communication in medical education [1,2]. It is used as a training method to acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills in a range of disciplines and with learners of different ages (e.g., acquisition of language skills , [3] cross-cultural training, [4] medical science, business and human resources [5]. Although its use is widespread and educational theory provides a sound rationale for using this form of simulation, there is little published evidence for its effectiveness.…”

Best practices to impart clinical skills during preclinical years of medical curriculum

“…[ 40 41 ] It is used as a training method to acquire knowledge, attitudes, and skills in a range of disciplines and with learners of different ages (e.g., acquisition of language skills,[ 42 ] cross-cultural training,[ 43 ] medical science, business, and human resources). [ 44 ] Although its use is widespread and educational theory provides a sound rationale for using this form of simulation, there is little published evidence for its effectiveness.…”

How do the first year students find the way of learning medicine in Japan?

“…First year medical students are able to learn more effectively through open discussion in small groups with SPs than with teachers (Nestel et al 2002). In this program, SPs acted as patients with a disease in the learning task for PBL.…”