ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2022
Simulated patients and their reality: An inquiry into theory and method.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Linear virtual patients versus student role-plays in teaching patient-centeredness: a mixed-method study.International journal of medical education · 2026Trial
- Validating medical digital twins for clinical decision support: beyond predictive accuracy.JAMIA open · 2026Review
- Evaluation of community pharmacists' knowledge and real-world practices in drug interaction management: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Virtual reality for experiential learning: enhancing agitation management skills, confidence, and empathy in healthcare students.Medical education online · 2025Article
- Investigating the know-do gap in antibiotics prescribing: Experimental evidence from India.Science advances · 2025Article
- Construction and validation of a model for creating simulated scenarios based on Jeffries Theory.Revista brasileira de enfermagem · 2025Article
- Comparing the Quality of Direct-to-Consumer Telemedicine Dominated and Delivered by Public and Private Sector Platforms in China: Standardized Patient Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Private sector tuberculosis care quality during the COVID-19 pandemic: a repeated cross-sectional standardised patients study of adherence to national TB guidelines in urban Nigeria.BMJ global health · 2024Article
- General dentists' treatment plans in response to cosmetic complains; a field study using unannounced-standardized-patient.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on quality of tuberculosis care in private facilities in Bandung, Indonesia: a repeated cross-sectional standardized patients study.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Do private providers initiate anti-tuberculosis therapy on the basis of chest radiographs? A standardised patient study in urban India.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2023Article
- Tuberculosis diagnosis and management in the public versus private sector: a standardised patients study in Mumbai, India.BMJ global health · 2022Article
- Implementing Quality of Care Measures: Lessons from a Standardized Patient Study in Seven Provinces of China.American journal of public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Simulated standardized patients (SSP) have emerged as close to a 'gold standard' for measuring the quality of clinical care. This method resolves problems of patient mix across healthcare providers and allows care to be benchmarked against preexisting standards. Nevertheless, SSPs are not real patients. How, then, should data from SSPs be considered relative to clinical observations with 'real' patients in a given health system? Here, we reject the proposition that SSPs are direct substitutes for real patients and that the validity of SSP studies therefore relies on their ability to imitate real patients. Instead, we argue that the success of the SSP methodology lies in its counterfactual manipulations of the possibilities available to real careseekers - especially those paths not taken up by them - through which real responses can be elicited from real providers. Using results from a unique pilot study where SSPs returned to providers for follow-ups when asked, we demonstrate that the SSP method works well to elicit responses from the provider through conditional manipulations of SSP behavior. At the same time, observational methods are better suited to understand what choices real people make, and how these can affect the direction of diagnosis and treatment. A combination of SSP and observational methods can thus help parse out how quality of care emerges for the "patient" as a shared history between care-seeking individuals and care providers.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.