I'm anxiously awaiting a reasonable enough time to leave my apartment for the medical school this morning. I have two days of standardized patient exams. Standardized patient exams involve me pretending to be a doctor and an actor pretending to be a patient. It's supposed to assess my clinical skills, but I think it's a better assessment of my acting/improv abilities.
SP exams make me so nervous. I sweat profusely during the grueling patient encounter portion and then shake and panic during the following write-up portion. It's all timed and the patient encounter is filmed. That's a lot of pressure. To make matters worse, I don't have an audience that I can feed off of.
Today is a pass/fail exam. I have to score a 90% to pass. Today they will only be grading my history taking abilities. I have to ask the actor about their current complaint, their history of present illness, past medical history, etc. Tomorrow will be way worse. I have to perform almost every physical exam component I've learned in 30 minutes or less. And then write up my findings in 30 minutes or less.
I'm currently sitting on my couch in my white student doctor coat, twitching in anticipation of the nervous storm that is inevitable as the time of the exam inches nearer. Did I mention that I hate SPs? I absolutely hate them.
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