Portrayal of psychiatric disorders: Are simulated patients authentic?

摘要

To the Editor: The contact with simulated patients (SPs) bears the potential to improve medical teaching, including teaching in psychiatry and psychotherapy (1-3). To-date, only a few studies have addressed the question of whether SPs can be distinguished from real patients in the field of psychiatry. In the study by Sanson-Fisher and Pool, students were unable to tell SPs from patients (4). Krahn et al., on the other hand, observed that students could accurately identify SPs most of the time (5). Authenticity, that is, the impossibility of distinguishing SPs from patients, might be of particular relevance since it strongly modulates the experience of the students. In the study by Krahn and coworkers, 91% of the students who identified SPs reported feeling less empathy for the person. Our own experience is similar: Students frequently report having difficulty feeling and acting as doctors if they perceive the simulation as unrealistic. The aim of this study was to clarify whether SPs portraying psychiatric disorders can be distinguished from real patients.