Simulated Patient

My mother noticed me peering at the calendar this morning.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm trying to work out when my baby was born. She's about six weeks old. - Ah! good. St Patrick's day, March 17th, that'll be easy to remember. I think I'll call her Siobhan. My mother can be Irish, I think. My other daughter's twelve. She's called Michelle, after her father who was called Mike."

Anyone who didn't know the context of this could well have found it rather strange. In fact I was trying to create a credible character for some medical roleplay I was doing as a Simulated Patient.

Simulated Patients are actors, frequently, or trained non-actors, sometimes, who play the role of patients to help with the training or assessment of doctors, nurses, midwives, health visitors and other medical professionals.

If you've never heard of this before you'll think it sounds very odd. But take it from me, it's very interesting work, and the learners find it very useful. I've been doing it pretty regularly for - er - twenty-two years.

I'll tell you more about it when I'm not as tired as I am tonight - it's been a really busy week and tomorrow I'm off to the Lake District for the weekend to see lovely Amy, who was a close friend of my mother's at school and obligingly married one of her favourite cousins, thus welding her to our family for all time, and a very good thing too.