Actors Take Dramatic Roles at Hospitals

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At the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan, professional actors are hired to play sick people, to help medical students learn how to diagnose illnesses. It's not Broadway - but it pays $25 an hour. WSJ's Lucette Lagnado reports from New York.

NEW YORK—Quinn Lemley, an actress and chanteuse, has specialized in portraying Rita Hayworth in a one-woman show—channeling the 1940s glamour queen's songs and mannerisms, sashaying across the stage in elegant evening gowns reminiscent of old Hollywood.

But on some mornings after a performance, Ms. Lemley would report to Weill Cornell Medical College for a very different kind of acting job. Her costume for these gigs is two hospital gowns, one wrapped artfully on top of the other, accented by her long, red hair and, on a recent day, four-inch, flaming orange wedge shoes.

"I try to wear the gowns in a stylish way," says Ms. Lemley, preparing to slip into character as a newspaper editor with severe chest pains and a drug habit.

Forget waiting on tables or doing menial jobs. These days, to support themselves between gigs, or simply keep plying their craft, actors are auditioning at hospitals and medical schools to portray sick people—"standardized patients" in med school terms—who help aspiring doctors learn their craft.

Win May, who oversees the standardized patient program at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine says she has recruited actors who have appeared on TV shows such as "Mad Men" and "The Closer" or starred in commercials.

Quinn Lemley

In New York, Bedpan Alley, the nickname for a swath of hospitals on Manhattan's Upper East Side, has forged an alliance with the city's deep pool of professional actors—many of whom are happy to land a day job playing a patient.

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Weill Cornell Medical College, the Manhattan school connected to Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital, pays actors $25 an hour typically for an eight-hour day. The medical college invested $13 million in a standardized patients center opened in 2007. Along with a dozen exam rooms stocked with medical equipment, there are hidden cameras that record every interaction between students and actors; two-way mirrors allow faculty to observe.

"It is like what happens at a police station," says Yoon Kang, director of the medical school's Margaret and Ian Smith Clinical Skills Center. The encounter is recorded, and students later review their performance and get feedback.

In the current economy, both Dr. Kang in New York and Dr. May in L.A. say they've seen an uptick in actors wanting patient roles.

"At least you're acting on some level," says Denise Lock, an actress and opera singer who is part of Weill Cornell's ensemble cast. Ms. Lock, who has appeared in overseas productions of Porgy and Bess, is a veteran at playing patients at medical school.

"I have done heart attacks, lupus, diabetes, Parkinson's, hot flashes," she says.

Medical schools have long used "simulated" patients to teach students to diagnose conditions. But these programs have become more widespread—and rigorous—in recent years, experts say. Concern over patient safety helped fuel growth, Dr. Kang says: "In simulated environments, students can practice and make mistakes—no one is going to get hurt."

Since 2004, when a student's interaction with faux-patients was made part of the licensure exams to be a doctor, medical schools across the country scrambled to beef up such programs. "If you weren't on the boat then, you got on the boat," says Karen Reynolds, president of the Association of Standardized Patient Educators.

Not all places have a surplus of professional actors at their disposal. In Springfield, Ill., Ms. Reynolds, who runs the standardized patient program at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, says they depend on ordinary people to play, well, ordinary people. The pay is $12 an hour. "It is either college-age kids, or retired people, or work-at-home moms or dads," who take the job, she says.

She doesn't mind. "Sometimes, actors are a little bit dangerous because they want to take the character somewhere and we don't want that," she says.

Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal Actor Tom Pennacchini changes into a gown for his role as a 'standardized patient' at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan.

The medical students are acting, too. They know the patients are performing, but they must relate to them as they would a real sick person. Students are judged on how empathetic they are, how well they communicate and on their diagnostic skills.

On a recent morning at Weill Cornell, actor Kevin Orr landed a role as a gout patient with a problem knee. To heighten the realism, a staffer made up his knee to look red and inflamed. He took it from there, limping and describing for a student the "excruciating deep pain" he felt.

"I can barely walk," he moaned. "I've never had pain like this."

When playing a patient, he is careful not to reveal too much information: The student is supposed to figure out what's wrong by asking probing questions, and by just probing.

"They will poke you—and they will keep poking you," Mr. Orr says, recalling a recent gig elsewhere, playing a diabetic with numbness in his foot. "My record is being poked seven times. I want to tell them to stop."

Dr. Kang and her staff maintain hundreds of black-and-white and color head shots, along with resumes. Still, casting can be a challenge.

"We want stars but we need to temper their star quality," says Dr. Kang, who worries about divas who could frighten young students. "We don't want the Laurence Oliviers to take too much dramatic license."

Dr. Kang recalls an actor she hired at another medical school to play a difficult elderly patient. He arrived with a prop—a cane—which he kept waving around until the student became distraught.

David Phillips, 25, a fourth-year medical student at Weill Cornell says he was overwhelmed as a first-year student when he began dealing with the professional actors "and you were on camera being watched all the time."

One of the hardest parts of dealing with patients—including actor-patients—was having to ask "some very personal questions" from a checklist. He would always blush, at first, and it didn't make it easier when one said to him "Why are you asking that?"

These days, he says, "I blush much less than I did."

Neal Mayer, one of Dr. Kang's stars, has appeared in Broadway's "Les Misérables," played George W. Bush off-Broadway and toured with a national production of "101 Dalmatians." But med school roles have special challenges. Recently asked to play a patient with meningitis, Mr. Mayer had to remain still off and on for hours, with his eyes closed, while students prodded him.

There can be awkward moments. Mr. Mayer says a first-year medical student once asked if he was pregnant.

When he reminded her he was a man, she simply repeated the question.

Write to Lucette Lagnado at lucette.lagnado@wsj.com

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