Station 10

Instructions for candidate

You have been asked to review the ECG of a patient on the ward who is being treated with clozapine. He started clozapine 4 weeks ago and has been breathless over the past few days. He is not diabetic and has no previous medical history. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia aged 20. The medical student with you would like to know what the ECG means.

Instructions for actor

You know that an ECG shows the electrical activity in the heart and that the different patterns show different things. Your knowledge is vague about what each of the different parts mean. You ask the candidate to talk you through how to interpret an ECG and what this ECG shows.

If you feel they do not explain any aspect well, you ask them to explain again until you are sure you understand it.

Station 11

Instructions for candidate

Miss Jones suffered a head injury 2 years ago. Her family have reported concerns that she is behaving oddly. They gave the example that she appears to be gambling a lot and boasts about having had 100 one-night stands in the past year. You have been asked to assess Miss Jones’ cognitive function.

Instructions for actor

You are flirtatious and unless the candidate addresses this appropriately you continue to escalate this behaviour. If they address it in an inappropriate manner, then you can become more hostile and less willing to complete the tasks they set you, asking more questions about what the tasks involve.

You have a concrete understanding of the world. So if the candidate asks you what is meant by a phrase such as ‘people in glass houses should not throw stones’, you make a literal interpretation of this and say because they will break windows. Make a similar literal interpretation of alternative phrases they may use.

If they ask you to copy a sequence of hand movements then you cannot do this and repeat one movement over and over again.