Getting Paid to Play Sick at School

A look inside the world of "standardized patients" and the role they play in training health care providers

21 February 2012

Ted Bell, a medical actor, talks with a health care professional.

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Some people act sick to get out of work. Others act sick to get work. For medical actors like Ted Bell, the stage is an examination room with a future doctor, nurse or other health care professional.

TED BELL: "I start getting a cramping type pain right here."

EMILY TYRRELL: "And how long do they last for when they occur?"

Mr. Bell is playing a fifty-five-year-old patient with stomach pains that began three months ago.

TED BELL: "I’m a teacher. And several times its happened at school."

Ted Bell is just playing a teacher. But in a way he really does teach. He helps students like Emily Tyrrell at the University of Maryland School of Nursing learn to work with patients.

In real life, Mr. Bell is a retired civil engineer. He now works as what is known as a "standardized patient." He stays busy working at local medical schools.

TED BELL: "And it has developed into a great part time, or retirement job actually, for me, and I go to all six schools in this region, Baltimore-Washington area."

About seven hundred standardized patients work in the area. Pay starts at seventeen dollars an hour. It can go as high as thirty-five dollars an hour depending on the project.