Vincent Brown’s Journal and Photography

Archives for November, 2004

The Abbreviated Life of an SP

A lot of people ask me what I do for a living. Well, to answer succinctly, I’m a full-time college student at Montgomery County Community College and I work part-time (8:00am-3:00pm) as a Standardized Patient for a company that will remain nameless (for confidentiality requirements).

Ahh, now, with that last part, you can see why explaining what I do for a living takes longer than usual. I will try to answer the questions I’m often asked about being a Standardized Patient:
What is a Standardized Patient?:

A Standarized Patient or SP for short, “is a person who has been carefully coached to simulate an actual patient so accurately that the simulation cannot be detected by a skilled clinician.”

Specific to my current situation, I learn a case history and physical findings of a patient case and portray the patient as accurately, consistently and with as much realism as possible for each candidate (12 of them per day).

It is said that an SP represents the “Gestalt” of the person being simulated; not just the history, but the body language, phsyical findings, personality and emotions.

Hey, wasn’t Kramer a fake patient in a Seinfeld episode?

Yes, he was. He portrayed a patient with gonorrhea to earn extra money. And no, I didn’t see that episode I’m sure it was funny though.

Alright, but what’s the purpose of being a Standardized Patient?

Well, quite simply to perform multiple case scenarios within a high-stakes examination for medical students. Medical students are now required to pass these exams to practice medicine in their desired field of study. They pay thousands of dollars for the exam itself and on top of that, travel, sometimes great distances across the country to partake in this exam.

We, as Standardized Patients above all must preserve confidentiality with regard to our particular cases, as not to tip off medical students (candidates) who are coming in for tests. After performing our role, we complete a clinical skills assessment where we recall the exam and document it objectively, accurate and consistently. It is important for our performances to be consistent as to give all candidates an equal and fair exam setting.

So, that’s generally it. I love what I’m doing. My co-workers are mostly actors and other performing artists who do this on the side for additional income, however, if you have an excellent ability to recall from short term memory, memorize a script and are willing, I suggest this to you. I especially recommend being a Standardized Patient to college students. The money is great, the schedule is flexible allowing you to pick the days you want to work.

* job description taken out of the SP Manual authored by my employer *

11/24/2004 | General, Life | 7 Comments

Kerry Should Have Won and I’m Bitter

I’m dissapointed today that it has to come down to counting provisional ballots in Ohio for the Kerry Campaign. I do not think another Bush administration will serve the people of this country as well as I believe a Kerry (democratic) administration would have. I have strong convictions that guided me to vote for Kerry on Tuesday, and I pray that those who voted for Bush had strong convictions as well. The decissions 51% of the population made on Election Day instills a sense of uneasyness in me, that I don’t think will go away soon.

Despite the past four years of the current Bush administration, these people came out anyway and asked for another 4 years from this man. I can say that I’ve only been a cognizant, aware citizen since about 1994, however, in the last 4 years, I am sure in myself that George W. Bush has been the single most destructive power in American politics since I can remember (and History has shown me).

I have explained to a lot of my friends and anyone who will listen, why I believe GWB has been utterly destructive during his term in office. Starting with the botched election of 2000, which the Democratic party took it in the ass, royally without making any noise or sounding the alarms.

This year, however, it’s not clearlyy a Democrat failure or GOP victory (maybe except in the House and Senate) in my impression. I see it as a failure of the system as a whole. People talk every election year about election reform but nothing really happens. There should be NO disenfranchised voters, yet: Hundreds of thousands of absentee votes in most states have not been tallied, more voters turned away from polling locations or given misleading information causing them to walk out of polls without voting, and thousands of people were in line at 1:00AM EST in most states (like mine, Pennsylvania) where polls closed at 8:00PM EST. Why can’t the election span atleast two days to allow EVERYONE who wants to vote, the ability to do so? The current constraints of our countries election process has always disenfranchised low-income, single parent households who can’t take the time off from their job to vote, many of them working multiple jobs, and taking care of families. We had roughly 13 hours (nationwide) for 105 some odd million people to vote.

I won’t go into a long and boring tirade about my views on the political structure of this country and why I think confusion and lies from four years of the Bush administration led a lot of people to vote for GWB, again. However, I will leave you all with these final words. A quote that I got off IRC:

"This country is full of idiots who elected their favorite idiot."