My employer: Duke University's Medical School.
Basically, I've been hired to lie to med students. The professors give me a character, complete with a fake name & very specific medical symptoms. They'll give me about a week to study the info. Then they bring me in and let the students question me as if I were an actual patient. The structure of it reminds me a lot of "Tony & Tina's Wedding" - some of the lines are scripted & specific, but a lot of the time I'll be improvising.
The weirdest thing about this job is that they want me to give the students feedback. I'm supposed to tell them whether I felt like they made enough eye contact, whether I felt they cared about me as a person or if they just saw me as a bag of organs, etc. etc. The point of the exercise is not just to teach the students to listen to their patients, but also to teach them about bedside manner & basic courtesy. So it's an acting job, but it's also a whole lot more than that.
It's VERY part-time work. I may only work for 5 hours this month & who knows when they'll call me in again. But I'll get paid! Woo hoo!
2 comments:
I did something like that years ago for DHS. We pretended to be foster parents, kids in foster care, abusive parents, and role-played with the DHS counselors. We had to give feedback afterwards, too. It was actually lots of fun.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it, Liz. I'm a bit nervous. I'm sure some of the students will consider it a major waste of time, but I'm hoping others will get something out of it.
Post a Comment