(173) Making it Reality: Health Professions Simulation in Collaboration with Undergraduate Student-Actors

Objective : Simulation is common in health professions education; however, some programs lack physical or financial access to simulation centers. Our aim is to describe the design of a collaborative pharmacy-theatre student simulation activity and gather perceptions from participants.

Methods: Undergraduate theater students were trained to serve as standardized patients in a virtual medication history simulation activity in a second-year pharmacy course. After the simulation, all pharmacy students, theater students, and faculty evaluators were asked to respond to a voluntary anonymous survey tailored to their role.

Results: Completed surveys were submitted by 65 of 105 pharmacy students (61.9% response rate), 3 of 5 faculty evaluators (60% response rate) and 7 of 12 theater students (58.3% response rate). The majority (94.5%) of pharmacy students felt the interaction with student actors was authentic and helped improve their ability to collect pertinent patient information. All faculty evaluators felt the pharmacy student’s interaction with the standardized patient seemed realistic. Grading time was decreased. All faculty evaluators felt the student actors were well prepared for the role of standardized patient and would prefer a theater student acting as a standardized patient in the future. All theater students reported receiving adequate instructions to be prepared for the activity and felt that they could apply their experience to their future career. All theater students reported they would serve as a standardized patient again in the future. Versus utilizing a simulation center, there was a 10-fold cost savings.

Conclusions: Integrating theater students as standardized patients in a virtual medication history simulation may be a realistic, cost-effective method that improves pharmacy student skills, decreases faculty grading time, and provides valuable experience to theater students.