Use of Simulated Clients in Marriage and Family Therapy Education

Syracuse UniversityKnowledge of how one should manage suicidal, homicidal, child maltreatment, and domes-tic violence situations is paramount in the training of marriage and family therapists(MFTs). Simulated patient modules were created to help clinical faculty address thesecrisis situations in a protected learning environment. The modules were implemented bythe MFT faculty in collaboration with the Office of Clinical Skills Assessment and Edu-cation at East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine. Qualitative data over thecourse of 2 years revealed six thematic domains regarding therapists’ performance, thera-pists’ emotions, the simulation experiences, and lessons learned. Educational, clinical, andresearch recommendations include tools to implement simulation exercises into marriageand family therapy programs as well as suggestions to assess for teaching effectiveness.In the medical field, a form of instruction that has become increasingly more common inthe training of physicians is the use of standardized or simulated patient (SP) scenarios. Typic-ally, an SP scenario involves any ‘‘medical encounter conducted purely for educational purpo-ses’’ (Adamo, 2003, p. 262), in which ‘‘participants have the opportunity to interact withpatients in a controlled learning environment’’ (Donovan, Hutchison, & Kelly, 2003, p. 125).The most common terms for these scenarios are standardized or simulated, and these terms willbe used in this article interchangeably.Standardized patient encounters allow faculty to assess their students’ clinical skills in asafe environment with no chance of harming an actual patient and provide students with anopportunity to transition to working with real patients (Barrows, 1993). Moreover, investiga-tors (Colliver & Williams, 1993) suggested that the use of SPs was ‘‘as good or better an assess-ment of clinical performance than conventional methods,’’ such as the use of ‘‘physicianobservers’’ (p. 455), or ‘‘paper and pencil examinations’’ (p. 457) that measure knowledge ofclinical skills.As a result of the success and effectiveness of the medical community’s use of SPs, investi-gators and educators have begun to incorporate standardized patients or clients in other fieldsas well (Larson et al., 1999). However, the use of standardized clients outside of the medical