C3NY maintains a diverse cadre of intelligent professionals (standardized patients - SPs) who can portray anything from a 16 year old runaway, to a 45 year old man with adult onset diabetes, to a 77 year old with Alzheimer’s.

We recruit standardized patients (SPs) from a large and talented pool of individuals in the tri-state area, many of whom have Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degrees, either in education, medicine, or the arts. The vast majority of the SPs have up to eight years experience as SPs in various medical education settings. In addition a good number of the people also have extensive experience in similar programs, i.e. programs utilizing simulated encounters either in medicine, law or finance.

SPs are selected for each individual program and case.

As appropriate, SPs may:

Presently we maintain an active database of 250+ SPs, drawn from a more comprehensive and diverse database of 1600 SPs of varying sizes, ages, ethnicities and talents.

We also have the expertise to create cases, depending on the needs of our constituent programs. We work with our partners to create the necessary biographical sketches, scenarios, history, physical and communications skills checklists, and then cast and train our people to perform them as needed.

In addition to the standard physical cases, such as cholecystitis, migraine headache, lupus, adult onset diabetes, etc., we also develop cases in psychiatric disorders, such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and the like.

The use of standardized patients in the field of medical education has risen exponentially in the past several years. The emphasis has shifted from a knowledge based curriculum to a clinical skills based curriculum. With the Step 2-CS examination that is now being required by the USMLE for licensure, the field of standardized patients has really come into its own.  The sky’s the limit for the use of standardized patients as professional medical educators.


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