Several days a year I’m what’s known as a Standardized Patient. An actor. A fake. A learning tool for beginning medical students. From interacting with me, they learn to communicate with “real” people in a medical setting.

Now seventy, I still remember the moment I walked into an exam room, in my thirties, prepared to help someone, and suddenly realized that this was my happy place. To greet someone, close the door, sometimes shake hands, then sit down on my rolling stool and share my brain and heart to solve some puzzle, using science and art, whether listening, touching, teaching or questioning. Very grateful to be accepted and needed, and learning from everyone.

Lisa Ramey
Peterborough, New Hampshire

I’m not sure which is worse: a physician’s exam room or a dentist’s office. An exam room is eerie in its silence, while the demonic whine of a dental office drill sends a shiver down my spine. But ultimately it may be the exam room, despite its potential to diagnose whatever diseases may be attacking my body, that scares me more. Its instruments evoke pain, its sterility the nothingness of death.

Dear readers,

When I think of an exam room, I picture the spaces I worked in during my thirty-three years as a family doctor. I picture walking into a cramped room whose stark surfaces and bare walls offered little warmth or hint of comfort. I imagine the major piece of furniture, an exam table, covered with a white paper that audibly crinkles at the slightest touch.

I picture the guest of honor, my patient–who surely does not feel like a guest of honor in these surroundings. They’ve been waiting for ten, twenty or thirty minutes–and sometimes longer–for my knock and my entrance.