The use of standardized or simulated patients (SPs)  in medical education for the teaching and assessment of clinical skills has enormously expanded the opportunities for medical students and residents to develop and practice their skills in challenging and high-risk clinical situations without any risk to patients.

While many use these two terms interchangeably, most medical educators define a simulated patient as an individual who is trained to act as a real patient in order to simulate a set of symptoms or problems. In contrast, standardized patients are more highly trained to produce a scripted clinical scenario in a standardized fashion with as little variability as possible.

SPs are widely used in the areas of taking a sexual history from or delivering bad news to patients. The New York Times even covered a program where our faculty uses SPs to teach residents in internal medicine to deliver bad news to a woman with an abnormal mammogram.

Read more at: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/12/simulated-patients-medical-education.html

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