Actors as Standardized Patients | Icahn School of Medicine

EDUCATION

Medical Education

At The Morchand Center, we hire trained, professional actors to serve as standardized patients. In addition to needing a well-developed approach to their craft, our actors must display consummate professionalism, excellent verbal and written communication skills, a prodigious memory, and a high level of comfort with improvisation.

The Morchand Center uses a rotating cast of more than 100 professional actors, and we have more than 1,000 professional actors in our database. This database also includes proctors, who help facilitate the daily programs, and techs who control and monitor the videotaping. Together, we work to enhance the essential skills required to care for patients in a compassionate manner.

Submission Guidelines

We encourage actors of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, as well as ages and physical types, to submit applications. If you are fluent in a foreign language, please make note of it on your resume and cover letter. To apply, submit a cover letter, headshot, and resume to morchandactorsubmission@gmail.com or to:

The Morchand Center
One Gustave L. Levy Place
Box 1127
New York, NY 10029
Actor Submission

Note: Please do not call The Morchand Center or email individual employees.

For the audition, actors perform two contrasting monologues, preferably from published plays. Those selected to attend a call-back audition participate in a group improv exercise and an orientation session that explains our policies and procedures.

Quality Control Among Actors

To ensure reliable evaluation, The Morchand Center implements rater and inter-rater reliability reviews of all standardized patients. We monitor our performances and evaluations of learners to assure their consistency, accuracy, and reliability, and look specifically at the following:

Accuracy and consistency of physical portrayals
Appropriateness of historical data supplied during performance
Accuracy/appropriateness of overall affect/demeanor in performance
Consistency of portrayals amongst standardized patients playing the same case
Consistency of one standardized patient’s portrayal of the same case from encounter to encounter
Accuracy of a standardized patient’s evaluations compared to a gold standard