What is a Standardized Patient?

A Standardized Patient (SP) is a lay person who has been trained to accurately and consistently portray an actual patient at a particular point in time; the SP presents with the patient's history, personality, physical finding, emotional structure and response pattern.

SPs are available either on or off campus for teaching, examination, demonstration, assessment, and video productions. On-campus SPs can be involved in training healthcare professionals in the following faculties: Medicine & Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Rehabilitation Medicine.

Standardized patients can be interviewed and examined by healthcare students, and they may be audio or videotaped during simulation to allow debriefing and feedback following simulations.