Motionless and confused, the patient laid on the bed with an intravenous and a broken leg, as two young students in blue and white scrubs tried eagerly to move him from the bed and onto a walker. He had just woken up from a three-week coma, after a grievous motorcycle accident.
In a room downstairs lays another patient, an athlete who was also in an accident. He is now a paraplegic showing signs of depression.
The hospital setting seems real, but the patients are not patients. They are student actors from the university’s new Standardized Patient Program. The actors, students from the theater department, portray an injured patient as nursing students and physical therapy graduate students assess them, as if it was a real life situation. This program represents three departments of the university: school of nursing, physical therapy and the theater department.
“It takes the robot and dummy out of the equation,” said Allan Carlsen, a theater professor. “To come in and deal with a live person in that situation is so rich in opportunities.”
All three departments worked together in the two-week program, which began on Nov. 2. There were 150 sophomore nursing students, 33 first-year physical therapy graduate students, and four actors who are undergraduates with theater minors.
The student actors get three credits for participating and can use the program to fulfill their Discovery Learning Experience, Carlsen said. The nursing students use the program as a lab.
The program began when Amy Cowperthwait, lab coordinator for the school of nursing, was thinking of better ways to evaluate students.
Cowperthwait said she talked to Tara Manal, director of the physical therapy department, about using live actors.
“Mannequins aren’t good for responses or moving them out of bed,” Cowperthwait said. “Patients have psychological and physical issues.”
For Cowperthwait, the idea was teaching students how to make decisions in a real life setting. Normally, students use dummies or test on each other, but she wanted to take it to a level of decision-making.
“You have to decide what equipment you need, what therapeutic techniques, and how the team will work together to get the patient out of bed and if they are even capable of getting out of bed,” Cowperthwait said. “It really causes them to make clinical decisions.”
Because the actors tend to fall down and scream in pain, she also wants the students to see the “consequences in a real and safe environment.”
Laura Schmitt, coordinator of the physical therapy department, described what students take away from their “aha moments” within every group session, a moment of revelation and of learning.
“We want them to get positive feedback early,” she said. “We want them to succeed, but constantly keep that bar high so they’re striving for something.”
For Doreen Mankus, a sophomore nursing student, this was the first life-like nursing experience she had in her labs. She said she was nervous, but found the lab to be very effective.
“We’ve learned all this stuff in the past year, but now it’s like putting it all together,” she said. “I wish every lab we did was with real people.”
Not only are the nursing students learning a lot through the Standardized Patient Program, but the actors are able to broaden their skill sets as well.
Zach Jackson and Sabrina Ali are both junior political science majors with theater minors. Both played a patient with a traumatic brain injury.
“I really enjoy it because it gives me a chance to act and experience something completely different,” Ali said. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever done.”
Jackson said the situation helps him use new techniques and different kinds of acting skills. Because there is no set script, it’s more improvisational for him.
Carlsen liked the idea for the theater department and the opportunity it gave actors at the university.
“It’s an extraordinary opportunity to be an actor and apply your trade in a real life moment, to people six feet away from you, when you’re usually separated by a stage,” Carlsen said.
The Standardized Patient Program ended for the Fall Semester on Nov. 13.
Cowperthwait has many ideas for the future of the Standardized Patient Program, including portrayals of psychiatric illness and having elderly actors with actual health problems.
Schmitt has even talked about opening options and having actors play patient’s family members.
“Now that it’s off the ground and now that we have a chance to breathe, we’re so excited about it in the future,” said Schmitt.
All in all, the collaboration of the three departments seems unlikely, yet Cowperthwait considers it a “great marriage.”
“Part of Harker’s initiative was to do things among departments, utilize resources within the university to come to a greater whole — awork together and have greater good come out of it,” Cowperthwait said.
In the end, it does seem to make everyone involved more educated within themselves and within the other departments.
“I know more about nursing and physical therapy than I’ve ever known,” Carlsen said. “It strengthens the university. When you put it all together it makes you even stronger.”
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