Meet longtime Standardized Patient (SP) educator Shirley McAdam, who joined the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine Clinical Simulation Laboratory in 2004.
In the following blog post, Janet Essman Franz writes about McAdam’s background, her role at Larner, and what she enjoys to do outside of work.
“I am deeply fulfilled by the knowledge that I am contributing to the compassionate care of the thousands of patients that LCOM students will treat in their lifetimes.”
Meet a Standardized Patient Educator
In the UVM Clinical Simulation Laboratory, or “Sim Lab,” medical students and other learners practice clinical and communication skills with Standardized Patients (SPs). These are highly trained individuals who accurately portray patients with specific conditions or other roles pertinent to medical care and teach communication and physical exam skills. Simulation allows learners to practice skills with a sense of realism in a safe and supportive learning environment before seeing real patients in an exam room or hospital. About 60 people work as standardized patients at UVM, ranging in age from 18 to in their 80s.
SP educator Shirley McAdam hires and educates SPs who participate in the Larner College of Medicine foundations level courses and clerkship rotations. She trains them to realistically portray patients; to assess medical students’ skills in communication, medical interviewing, and physical examinations; and to provide usable feedback to learners in both oral and written form.
McAdam joined the Sim Lab in 2004 as an SP, on the advice of a close friend who worked as an SP. “She suggested that I would be good at this work and really enjoy it. She was right,” McAdam says. “I loved what I was doing and eagerly enhanced my training through my own self-guided learning.”
McAdam began as a gynecological teaching associate, instructing health care learners to perform accurate and respectful breast and vaginal examinations. She achieved professional accreditation as a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator and was appointed lead SP in 2009. In 2015, McAdam became an SP educator.
“I’ve always become easily bored with repetition, and until I became involved in medical simulation, I never held any position for longer than five years,” she says, noting that she has worked in the Sim Lab for 20. “The field of SP methodology is always growing and changing, and so the opportunities to grow and learn new skills are infinite.”
Counselor, Teacher, Swing Dancer and More
Before joining UVM, McAdam worked as a senior counselor at a group home for teens with emotional impairment and behavior disorders. She additionally taught Lindy Hop and Balboa swing dance lessons for 13 years. In 2000 she co-founded Vermont Swings, a Burlington-area swing dance community that remains active today. While she no longer teaches dance, she remains passionate about swing dance. “I especially enjoy dancing to music from the 1930s and 1940s,” she says.
She starts every day with yoga and trained as a yoga instructor with UVM’s Yoga Teacher Training course, graduating in 2020. She loves day-hiking, “getting out among the trees and communing with nature, particularly in the spring and fall,” she says. “And lately I’ve rekindled a love for cooking.”
Her true passion, however, is helping people learn. “I have loved teaching since childhood and am moved when learners experience ‘aha!’ moments,” she says. “I am deeply fulfilled by the knowledge that I am contributing to the compassionate care of the thousands of patients that LCOM students will treat in their lifetimes.”
Learn more about the Clinical Simulation Laboratory
