Catherine O’Brien never anticipated her acting career would lead her to a role in a medical school team. Starting in Ontario, she worked with the University of Toronto part-time, where she played a patient to assist in training future healthcare professionals. Now, the well-known actor and director from P.E.I. continues this work at the University of Prince Edward Island’s (UPEI) new medical school.
O’Brien is a standardized patient at UPEI’s Clinical Learning and Simulation Centre (CLSC), where she acts out scripted roles to help students practice essential skills in realistic scenarios. The goal is to provide a safe environment for students to enhance their interviewing techniques, empathy, and patient comfort.
The team of standardized patients at the centre comes from diverse backgrounds, not limited to actors, to create authentic simulated patient encounters for students. Paul Charles, the simulation program manager, explained that the program includes various tools and resources to replicate real clinical settings, such as simulation rooms resembling hospital environments and advanced manikins that simulate medical conditions like breathing, talking, coughing, heart attacks, and seizures.
Beyond student training, healthcare professionals can also utilize the centre’s equipment and resources to improve their skills. A new addition, a “simulation rig,” designed as an ambulance interior inside a trailer, aims to provide training in real healthcare settings for scenarios like stroke or heart attack emergencies, emphasizing the importance of timely responses in critical situations.
O’Brien has already interacted with the first cohort of students at the medical school during their orientation day and is eager to collaborate with them in upcoming training sessions.
