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What sort of patient? The 'well volunteer'
The past 20 years have seen a dramatic change in the demographics of the UK medical population. In most UK medical schools it is still common practice for students to examine one another as ‘well volunteers’, such as for surface anatomy or heart sounds, and in some cases to peer-assess one another. Gender and cultural issues mean that sympathetic approaches to learners undressing in front of one another during skills sessions need to be adopted, and ‘healthy volunteers’ (such as PhD students) are recruited and paid to act as patients for clinical skills sessions and examinations. This allows all learners to participate fully in the sessions, and teaching is more predictable and productive. The ‘patients’ can be trained to give feedback similar to that of a lay clinical educator.
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