Evaluating the Believability of Standardized Patients Portraying Aphasia

Abstract

Background: Standardized patients (SPs) are people trained to portray characteristics of a disorder in a way that is accurate and consistent. They are often used in the medical field for training medical and nursing students. SPs have also been used in the field of speech-language pathology to portray a variety of disorders and symptoms. To this date, there is little in the current literature on the accuracy and believability of SPs’ portrayals of communication disorder symptoms. Aims: This paper reports on the believability of SPs’ portrayal of a communication disorder (i.e., non-fluent aphasia). The specific research questions are as follows: (1) Are SPs believable in their portrayal of a communication disorder (i.e., non-fluent aphasia) from the perspectives of (a) people who have the communication disorder, i.e., people with aphasia; and, (b) their family members? (2) Are the two SPs used in this study consistent with each other in their portrayal of the communication disorder? Methods: Participants were required to have a history of non-fluent aphasia due to stroke with onset at least nine months prior to their participation in the study. Participants were recruited from the Aphasia Registry and Repository at the University of Washington. Participants were asked to watch video clips of SPs in a simulated medical interview and rate the SPs on five different communication behaviors using 100 mm visual analog scales. Conclusions: The majority of participants reported SPs as believable; however, most participants indicated that there was something missing from the standardized patients’ portrayals of aphasia.