Unlikely Partners in Pediatric Education

Medical students, particularly in their first two years of training, crave for the opportunity to interview and interact with patients of all ages. The use of standardized patients (SPs) has helped provide medical students with a foundation to learn clinical skills, but nearly all SPs are adult actors. Children have been used as SPs in the past, but most are adolescents, leaving medical students with limited exposure to child SPs and few opportunities to communicate with children.