Contact: Andrea Boyle, UD Media Relations, 302-831-1421, aboyle@udel.edu
The University of Delaware's newest collaborative effort on campus brings together strange bedfellows -- the departments of physical therapy, nursing and theatre.
Undergraduate theatre students are becoming standardized patients, healthy lay people who are trained to portray a patient with a particular condition. The collaboration is one of the first of its kind integrating departments whose talents are valuable to one another but who rarely cross paths.
Standardized Patients are trained to present not just the history of a patient but also demonstrate their body language, emotions, personality, and relevant physical findings. The realistic interactions provide student healthcare workers with real-time feedback in an environment free of consequences. The standardized patient model is used by medical schools nationwide, but rarely in undergraduate programs, and almost never with the help of a college's theatre department.
Through Friday, November 14, the theatre students are performing daily “shows” where nursing and physical therapy students will test their skills. The theatre students portray patients with head and spinal cord injuries. As training, the students observed actual patients with these conditions at he University of Delaware Neurologic and Older Adult Physical Therapy Clinic on campus, at Johns Hopkins and Wilmington Hospitals.
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Watch some “performances” here (includes b roll available for use by media).
