I did this for many years at Michigan State University, at both their DO and MD schools. The scenario I portrayed most frequently was a married woman in her 40s who had an unplanned pregnancy. There were two phases to the interviews. The first was to inform me of the risks associated with being older and pregnant and what amniocentesis testing involved. This half I mostly had to keep the students from getting too technical. The second interview (usually with different students) was to inform me that I was indeed carrying a child with Downs Syndrome. There were some students that I trusted the moment they walked through the door, others I sat there thinking “oh please dear lord go into something like pathology or forensics, something where you don’t have to deal with patients”. One time as I sat there getting nauseous listening to the student I realized how some people throw up when getting bad news. Some had heard that I cried so they handed me tissue before I cried. Ooops. I clammed up on them and made them squirm. Very very few ever so much as reached out to touch me. The best student was one who said “you have to allow yourself to grieve for the normal child you’re no longer going to have”. I burst into tears and she hugged me. At the end of that interview I broke character and let her know that was the perfect response and asked her how did she know what do say. She simply told me she had two severely retarded children and her doctor has merely walked into her hospital room and said your child has “xyz” and walked out and left her alone. I believe the video of her interview was used in the future of an example of what to do.
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