Standardized Patients

I was walking out the door when I ran into my psychiatrist neighbor. I said "I'm going to interview a standardized patient today!" He said "what's a standardized patient?" I was a little surprised. I said "It's an actor who's paid to pretend to be a real patient. We get to practice on him." He said, "I my day, we just interviewed real patients. There's plenty at the mental health cooperative that would be jumping at the chance to get interviewed for 15 bucks an hour." Hmm.

So I left for school. The patient was a 40 year old man. The presentation was so classic I almost started laughing. Unilateral headache, "shimmering" visual aura, slowly progressing, pounding pain, lasting about a day. Nausea.

A migraine headache. Case solved. I reassured him that he didn't have a brain tumor, which he was worried about. It was kind of thrilling actually. Putting all that I knew together and making a diagnosis, even though it was a fake patient. I even knew how he should be treated.

Hopefully the next one will be more challenging.